In the last few years, Big Data has generated a lot of buzz in the tech industry. It is undoubtedly one of the most exciting developments to have taken place in the IT space so much so that Big Data has become the new blue-eyed baby of many entrepreneurs. Startups focusing on the Big Data technology have mushroomed over the last couple of years and it’s not surprising to see why.
The Big Data technology and service market represents a multibillion dollar opportunity. The International Data Corporation (IDC) has forecast the Big Data technology and services market to grow at a 26.4 percent CAGR to $41.5 billion through 2018 or about six times the growth rate of the overall IT market.
With so many jumping aboard the Big Data train, it can be tough to separate the wheat from the chaff. Here are 9 Big Data startups that left an impression on the industry in 2015:
1. DataHero: DataHero is a self-service cloud BI platform that allows any user to quickly connect to cloud services without the help of an IT team.
It allows users to keep all their cloud data in one location for easy accessibility and creates charts and dashboards based on their specific data. The company was founded in 2011 and is the first truly self-service analytics tool. DataHero is headquartered in San Francisco, CA and is led by a team of young entrepreneurs with Ed Miller as the CEO. The company was able to snag $6.1 million in Series A funding in May 2015.
2. Cloudera: Cloudera was formed when three engineers from Google, Yahoo, and Facebook joined forces with a former Oracle executive in 2008.
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, the companyprovides Apache Hadoop-based software, support and services, and training to business customers. In 2012, Cloudera was named among the “25 coolest emerging vendors for 2012.” The company also received the prestigious “CTO Award for Innovation” from Morgan Stanley in the same year. Cloudera received a whopping $1040 million in funding in January 2015.
3. Domo Intelligence: Domo was founded by Josh James in 2010 in American Fork, Utah.
Domo Intelligence is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) venture that allows businesses to bring all their data together in an easy-to-manage platform. The company’s aim is to provide direct, simplified, real time access to business data without any IT involvement. Domo was featured in the Forbes list of Top 100 Most Promising American Companies for 2011. It was also named one of the best places to work for in Utah in 2014 and 2015. Domo was able to receive $250 million in funding in 2015.
4. Arcadia Data: Arcadia Data was founded in 2012 by Sushil Thomas, Priyank Patel, Shant Hovesepian, and Doug Cameron.
The four founders continue to form the core leadership team of the company along with David Fishman. Founded with the singular mission to connect business users to Hadoop, Arcadia Data builds the industry’s only Unified Visual Analytics and BI Platform for Big Data. Their customer base includes many within the Fortune 200, while their investors include big guns like Intel, Blumberg Capital, and Mayfield. The company has announced that it had raised $11.5 million in Series A funding from its three investors in 2015.
5. Cazena: Cazena was founded in 2014 with the mission to radically simplify Big Data processing in the cloud for faster business outcomes at the fraction of a cost.
In literally three clicks, Cazena can move and process big data in the cloud. Cazena was founded by a number of employees of data warehousing company Netezza and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Formation 8, and North Bridge Venture Partners. The company, with its headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, managed to raise $20 million in Series B funding from its three investors in July 2015.
6. Opera Solutions: Starting with a vision of how data will change the way the world does business, Opera Solutions has become a global leader in machine learning science and advanced analytics.
This company specializes in building and delivering analytics solutions to large and mid-sized clients across industry spectrum. Headquartered in New York/New Jersey area, Opera Solutions was established by current CEO Arnab Gupta and is one of the top 10 Big Data vendors that derives 100 percent of its revenue from big data products and services. The company was valued around $500 million as of 2012. In its latest round of funding, the company received $122.2 million in January 2015.
7. Interana: Interana is the fast and scalable event-based analytics solution to answer critical business questions about customer behaviour and product usage.
These insights can help build right strategies for growth. Interana was founded in 2013 in Redwood City, California by current CEO Ann Johnson, CTO Bobby Johnson, and Head of Product Lior Abraham. The company announced having received $20 million in Series B funding led by Index Ventures in January 2015.
8. JethroData: Founded in 2012 in New York City by a team of industry veterans, Jethro is a SQL and indexing engine for Hadoop that is sandwiched between a BI tool and the data source.
It enables BI users to analyze Big Data in real-time with a suite of robust BI tools such as Tableau or Qlik. The company’s co-founders Eli Singer, Boaz Raufman, and Ronen Ovadya are Israelis with an impressive work record in the United States. Jethro has an R&D center in Israel. In June 2015, the company announced closing an $8.1 million Series B financing round led by Square Peg Capital and existing investor Pitango Venture Capital.
9. Kyvos Insights: This company, which was operating in stealth mode until June 2015, has already shaken up the Big Data and Business Intelligence market with OLAP-on-Hadoop technology that is massively scalable and responds to queries in record-short time.
Kyvos lets business users visually explore their data, interact with it effortlessly, and derive meaningful insights instantly to make better-informed business decisions. The Los Gatos, California-based company is helmed by Praveen Kankariya and was featured in CRN’s “Coolest Big Data Startups of 2015.”
If there’s one thing that is clear in light of the success of these Big Data companies and the backing they have received from venture capitalists, it’s the fact that Big Data is here to stay. Qualify to become a part of this massive tech wave by completing an executive program in business analytics. Hurry, time and Big Data wait for no one!
