Yahoo Japan is selling analytics as a service, thanks to a partnership with US cloud-based big data provider Treasure Data. The pair's first offering is aimed at crunching marketing data.

Yahoo Japan Big Data Insight lets marketing and technology firms store and analyze massive volumes of business-related data. It is cloud-based,. uses technology from Treasure and runs from data centers at Yahoo subsidiary IDC Frontier.

The partnership said their cloud-based big data service would be quicker and cheaper than doing the same thing in-house. It will also allow real-time processing and analysis of data from several manufacturers' sensor equipment. For inance, Treasure recently announced an alliance with electronics giant Pioneer for vehicle telematics.

“Our customers from around the world tell us the same thing over and over again: Companies need the agility to rapidly launch big data initiatives for marketing, without the inevitable drag created by purchasing, deploying and maintaining highly complex hardware, software and data environments," said Treasure Data CEO Hiro Yoshikawa.