Above the Trend Line: machine learning industry rumor central, is a recurring feature of insideBIGDATA. In this column, we present a variety of short time-critical news items such as people movements, funding news, financial results, industry alignments, rumors and general scuttlebutt floating around the big data, data science and machine learning industries including behind-the-scenes anecdotes and curious buzz. Our intent is to provide our readers a one-stop source of late-breaking news to help keep you abreast of this fast-paced ecosystem. We’re working hard on your behalf with our extensive vendor network to give you all the latest happenings. Heard of something yourself? Tell us! Just e-mail me at: daniel
In some recent funding news, we just learned that FogHorn Systems, a leading developer of “edge intelligence” software for industrial and commercial Internet of Things (IoT) applications, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by March Capital and GE Ventures. Additional Series A funding was provided by Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, Yokogawa Electric Corporation and Darling Ventures. The company also converted an additional $2.5 million of initial seed capital provided by March Capital and The Hive, the Palo Alto-based AI and big data studio that co-created FogHorn. FogHorn is a leader in the rapidly emerging domain of edge intelligence (or “fog computing”) for industrial and commercial IoT applications. The company’s breakthrough fog computing software platform is a critical enabler for a new class of powerful real time analytics, machine learning models and edge computing applications in a wide variety of industrial and enterprise use cases … Reltio, the enterprise data-driven applications and modern data management Platform as a Service (PaaS) company, announced that it has raised $22M in Series B funding. Leading the oversubscribed round is one of the world’s largest and most successful VC firms, New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Existing investors, Crosslink Capital and 406 Ventures added to their $10M Series A investment, bringing Reltio’s total venture funding to $32M to date. The new financing will be used to extend Reltio’s leadership position in modern data management through accelerated hiring of talented individuals across all groups, and continued expansion into global markets.
In financial results news, we heard on the street that Datawatch Corporation (NASDAQ-CM: DWCH) announced 56 percent year-over-year growth in APAC channel revenue in 1H16. The company’s high-growth trajectory is in part attributed to burgeoning market demand for Datawatch Monarch as the best self-service data preparation (prep) platform for Tableau users. The company attracted six more prominent Tableau resellers in the region in just the past four months. Partner organizations from India and China to the Philippines are recognizing Monarch for the unique value it provides customers in speeding and broadening analytics, and being a profitable means to expand their respective businesses …
The pace of new industry alignments continues with Splice Machine, the open-source SQL RDBMS powered by Hadoop and Spark, announcing that it has entered a strategic partnership with Incedo, a technology solutions provider specializing in data and analytics, product engineering and emerging technologies. The partnership will generate solutions to help enterprises consolidate, store, and centrally manage all of their data, as well as accelerate data processing for faster data-driven decision making … We also found out that PwC US and Paxata unveiled that they will deliver a new self-service data preparation solution to PwC’s existing governance, risk, and compliance capabilities. Under the new relationship, Paxata will work with PwC to develop customized data preparation solutions that help clients structure various types of data in an intuitive and visual way, accelerating business outcomes through faster and more effective data ingestion and analysis.
We found out about some M&A news with Datavail, North America’s largest provider of managed services for data and database administration, announcing the acquisition of Art of BI, an Oracle analytics consulting company focused on OBIEE and Hyperion. In addition to consulting expertise, the acquisition brings to Datavail a range of software products that extend the functionality of OBIEE and accelerate the implementation of Hyperion. Its software products include the first-ever plug-in for Oracle BI. Christian Screen, founder and CEO of Art of BI, which is headquartered in Fort Mill, S.C., will become the leader of Datavail’s Oracle BI practice. “We’re excited to bring Christian and his team on board to expand and deepen our expertise in Oracle’s offerings in the BI and analytics space,” said Scott Frock, COO of Datavail. “This acquisition aligns with our core vision to be a leader in helping clients manage and leverage their data.” Datavail manages the databases of some of Oracle’s largest and most complex database installations, and works with those clients for end-to-end support including installation, configuration and managed operational support. Expansion into Hyperion and OBIEE is a logical next step, said Frock … The xPatterns® big data analytics platform from Atigeo™ will deepen its intellectual property (IP) portfolio as a result of the recent acquisition of ClearSight Systems technology. The technology assets were acquired in the second quarter of this year. The newly-acquired IP is seamlessly compatible with the xPatterns central analytics engine and expands xPatterns’ reach in real-time data, dynamic forecasting, and enhanced insights for enterprise customers.
In people movement news there is Delphix, a market leader in data virtualization, naming Marc Aronson, a software industry veteran and former Oracle executive, as its Senior Vice President of Engineering. This appointment is the latest in a series of strategic hires by Delphix that strengthens the company’s leadership team and positions Delphix for continued success. In his new role, Aronson will provide direction for the company’s enterprise-ready software, responding to needs of the market and Delphix customers, while also driving high-performance standards within the Delphix engineering organization … Identity Finder LLC, a leading provider of sensitive data risk reduction solutions, announced it has changed the company name to Spirion, and appointed Dr. Jo Webber as its CEO. Dr. Webber brings more than 16 years of experience leading global technology companies. The new brand and website (www.spirion.com) reflects the company’s ongoing mission to leverage its deep knowledge of content, context, data, documents, risk and analytics to deliver a solution that provides cost effective and complete management of the sensitive data risk within the extended organization. Spirion’s Data Platform was developed for CISOs, CIOs, and vice presidents of IT and IT Security to prevent the deliberate theft and accidental loss of sensitive data … Also Cambridge Semantics, a leading provider of graph-based Smart Data discovery and exploratory analytic solutions, announced the appointment of Arthur Keen as Managing Director Financial Services. In this newly created position, Keen will serve the growing number of Cambridge Semantics customers in the financial services sector adopting its Anzo Smart Data Lake™ solutions for enterprise scale analytics.
This week brought a number of important customer wins for big data vendors starting with MapR Technologies, Inc. revealed that RiskIQ, a leader in external threat management, is using the MapR Converged Data Platform to cost-effectively provide faster and more comprehensive threat detection on extremely large data sets. RiskIQ’s external threat management platform scans, analyzes and stores entire websites, mobile app stores, and social media outlets across the entire internet. As the amount of data and sophistication of security threats grew, RiskIQ wanted to be able to provide their clients with faster and more comprehensive threat detection analysis in an economical way. RiskIQ selected the MapR Platform and has been using it as a distributed storage system for several years. More recently the company is using MapR with Apache Spark, Hive, Parquet, and Oozie and has successfully introduced new threat detections product offerings for their customers.
There were a number of product announcements this week including, Niara, a recognized leader in user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), announcing an application of UEBA machine learning to detect advanced attacks such as ransomware and whaling by including the behavior of the attacker to enhance the precision and timeliness of alerts. Through the use of specifically-designed analytics that focus on the tactics of the exploit, analysts can see these attempts even before the ransomware gains a toehold in the customer environment, and can take steps to stop them before they do widespread damage … MapR Technologies, Inc., announced that Gartner, Inc. has recognized MapR for its Converged Data Platform offering receiving the 3rd highest product scores for the Logical Data Warehouse and Context Independent Data Warehouse, two of four Use Cases in the July 2016 Critical Capabilities for Data Warehouse and Data Management Solutions for Analytics report. Nineteen providers were evaluated to help data and analytics leaders, business intelligence (BI) strategists and advanced analytics implementation teams to evaluate vendor offerings’ based on the 11 most important functional capabilities that are required to support the major use cases identified.
And finally, our Vendor of the Week recognition goes to Talend, officially becoming a public company on Friday, July 29 and ringing the opening bell at NASDAQ (TLND).
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