Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is buying the big data analytics company SGI for $275 million in a move to strengthen its position in high performance computing (HPC) and data analytics.

HPE says the explosion of data is driving organizations to adopt high-end computing systems to run big data workloads. And SGI’s technology complements its enterprise data center products at a time when more companies are interested in HPC.

Also, HPE says the SGI acquisition helps it expand its presence in key verticals such as government, research, and life sciences. Many organizations in these verticals are building supercomputer installations.

The $11 billion HPC segment is growing at an estimated 6 percent compound annual growth rate over the next three years, with the data analytics segment growing at over twice that rate, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).

The explosion of data is being generated from mobile devices, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, machine-generated data, and the increase of human data in the form of social media and video.

SGI has about 1,100 employees worldwide and had revenues of $533 million in fiscal 2016. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of HPE's fiscal year 2017.

In June, HPE said it was teaming up with GE Digital to combine its hardware with GE’s IoT software platform - Predix. The goal of the partnership is to deliver real-time analytics from the edge to the cloud.