Above the Trend Line: your industry rumor central is a recurring feature of insideBIGDATA. In this column, we present a variety of short time-critical news items grouped by category 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 you a one-stop source of late-breaking news to help you keep 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
Welcome to 2018! Here at insideBIGDATA.com, we’re looking forward to a very big year for our industry that keeps accelerating in innovation at a break neck pace. We plan to continue bringing you prime coverage for our main areas of focus: big data, data science, machine learning, AI and deep learning. The popular “Above the Trend Line” column will continue to be our mouthpiece for the big data ecosystem. For now, let’s started with some new funding news … Maana, the pioneer of digital knowledge technology, announced it has raised $28 million in Series C funding. The round is led by China International Capital Corporation (CICC) and Eight Square Capital. Other new investors include Accenture Ventures and Sino Capital. All of Maana’s existing strategic investors, Intel Capital, GE Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures and Shell Technology Ventures participated. The funding demonstrates confidence from strategic global investors in the key role the Maana Knowledge Platform ™ is playing to accelerate industrial digital transformation. Investments in Maana to date total $68 million. Maana has purposely chosen to take strategic investments to enable the company to develop a mature platform designed specifically to address the toughest industrial digitization challenges … Collibra, leader in enterprise data governance and catalog software, announced it has closed $58 million in Series D financing. This round was led by existing Collibra investors ICONIQ Capital and Battery Ventures, with participation from early Collibra investors Dawn Capital, Index Ventures and Newion Investments, bringing the total funding for Collibra to over $133 million. This Series D investment will help Collibra accelerate its ambitious growth plans – including a significant number of new hires in 2018 – and fuel its rapid global growth and industry leadership as a premier provider of data governance and catalog solutions. Collibra will use this investment to expand staff and scale operations, including advancing product development, supporting and growing the customer base and increasing customer success and adoption, and building strategic partnerships and alliances … Swarm64, provider of the scalable data accelerator (SDA), which enables relational databases to perform real-time big data analytics, has secured a Series B funding round of 12.5 million US dollars. The Series B round was led by Intel Capital and Investinor; Alliance Venture and Target Partners participated in the round … Rubikloud Technologies Inc. announced that it has raised $37 million in an oversubscribed Series B financing round led by Intel Capital with new investors iNovia Capital and OTEAF participating. Existing investors Horizons Ventures and Access Industries also participated in the round. This round brings the company’s total investment to $45 million to date. Rubikloud will use the latest funding to expand its offices into Europe and Asia to meet demand for retail artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to the growing global market … CLARA analytics (“CLARA”), a leading artificial intelligence (AI) and data science company specializing in building easy-to-use AI-based solutions focused on claims operations for the property and casualty (P&C) and disability insurance industries, announced an $11.5 million Series A funding round led by Oak HC/FT. CLARA enables the $800 billion global commercial property and casualty market to improve financial performance by decreasing the billions of dollars in claims leakage that occurs annually.
In the new partnerships, alignments and collaborations corner, we learned … Jitterbit, the API transformation company, announced that Humantelligence, a leading AI-driven recruiting and culture analytics platform, will embed Jitterbit to infuse Humantelligence culture analytics data into all applicant tracking and enterprise HR systems like Workday, SAP/SuccessFactors, ADP, Oracle HCM; SMB HR systems like BambooHR, Zoho, Zenefits, and ATS systems like Greenhouse, iCIMS, Oracle/Taleo, and Bullhorn, to name a few. By rapidly combining data from human capital management (HCM) systems with Humantelligence data, Humantelligence gives HR managers unique culture insights. HR managers can then leverage these insights to measure cultural fit at the team, group, and company level for applicant candidates and the existing workforce, reducing employee turnover by 30 percent, accelerating the interview process by 80 percent and significantly improving corporate performance … Greenwave Systems, Inc. announced its partnership with CUJO AI to fight cyberattacks by providing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) an end-to-end home security solution for home network users. Greenwave Systems is the global software leader for managed services. CUJO AI a the leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) company that provides telecommunications companies a multi-solution AI-driven software platform. Based on CUJO AI customer data, a typical household with a CUJO AI device has an average of 14.5 devices. These devices come with default configurations, undocumented backdoor accounts and exposed legacy services. CUJO AI blocks an average of 50 threats per user, each month, protecting home users from these external, unseen threats. CUJO AI offers the essential building blocks required to succeed in home automation, including AI network security, AI device intelligence and semantic parental controls … NXP Semiconductors (NASDAQ:NXPI), an automotive semiconductor supplier and Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU), a leading Chinese language search provider announced a cooperation in autonomous driving. Under the terms of the agreement, NXP will join Baidu’s open autonomous driving platform, Apollo, and provide semiconductor products and solutions including millimeter wave radar, V2X, security, smart connectivity and in-vehicle experience technologies … SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) announced that it has added a group of 18 strategic partners to help more businesses adopt Internet of Things (IoT) technology. This global network of partners will provide implementation services for SAP Leonardo IoT accelerator packages, which are designed to help customers quickly build IoT solutions specific to their business needs at a predictable price. The new partners delivering express innovation services include Accenture, Bristlecone, Capgemini, CSTI Corp., Deloitte Consulting, Exed Consulting, Fujitsu, GoSCM, HCL Technologies, IntechPro, Intrigo Systems, KPIT Technologies, Movilitas, Process Technologies, Rocket Consulting Ltd., Tech Mahindra, Vesta Partners and Westernacher Consulting.
In the new products, solutions and services department we learned … that in responding to the widening importance of Big Data analytics across the global business landscape, leading engineering, construction and consulting company Black & Veatch launched Atonix Digital™ LLC. Atonix Digital is a wholly-owned subsidiary tasked with delivering transformational, data-driven solutions for clients. Atonix Digital, based in Overland Park, Kansas, focuses on software development, sales and delivery, as well as innovative analytics through the proprietary ASSET360® data analytics platform developed by Black & Veatch. Atonix will serve clients managing power, water, smart city, oil & gas and communications resources, as well as an expanding array of industry verticals.
We also heard of some new customer wins … Looker, the data platform company, has been selected by leading global travel site trivago to optimize the performance of its marketing programs. Looker puts data directly in the hands of trivago’s decision makers, removing any roadblocks to receiving timely insights … Tapped to help the UN leverage its competencies in the fast‑evolving field of artificial intelligence, deepsense.ai ran an introductory workshop on deep learning and discussed its practical applications in real‑life use cases … Health Catalyst, a technology leader in healthcare analytics, decision support and outcomes improvement, announced a multi-year agreement with Hospital Sisters Health System to implement the Health Catalyst Data Operating System (DOS™). The Health Catalyst Data Operating System is a data-first, analytics and application platform that transforms raw data from virtually any data source into Deep Data—data that is meaningful, actionable, and provides actual business value at a lower cost. DOS accomplishes this by integrating and analyzing critical data from over 200 of the most widely-used data sources, and delivering real-time decision support within the existing workflows of clinicians, administrators and other healthcare professionals … Looker, also announced that Deliveroo – one of the top meal delivery companies in the world – has selected Looker to operationalize its data and manage its massive international network to better serve its partners and customers. Deliveroo will now have a complete view of all the marketing, sales, logistics, delivery and online data from its regional and international operations. Deliveroo has a distributed network of partners and customers with over 30,000 restaurants and 30,000 riders across 200 cities and towns in 12 countries. Timeliness of meal delivery and quality of the customer experience is of utmost importance. Deliveroo needed to simplify the complexity of not only managing all the inbound data, but also understanding it to empower them to make faster, more accurate decisions.
And finally, in new M&A news we learned … SolarWinds, a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, announced it has completed the acquisition of Loggly, Inc., a provider of cloud-based log monitoring and log analytics software. With the transaction, the company also will add to its team of world-class software engineering talent. Loggly® is a SaaS-based, unified log monitoring and log analytics product, that aggregates, structures, and summarizes log data so users can analyze and visualize their data to answer key questions, spot trends, and deliver actionable reports. The acquisition complements the company’s existing portfolio of SaaS-based cloud monitoring solutions and SolarWinds plans to continue investing to innovate and enhance Loggly … Microsoft has announced an agreement to acquire Avere Systems, a leading provider of high-performance storage for cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments. Avere technologies are commonly used by customers who run large scale compute workloads and they are a proven leader in the media and entertainment industry, working with global brands including Sony Pictures’ Imageworks, animation studio Illumination Mac Guff and Moving Picture Company (MPC). Avere also provides high performance storage across a broad set of industries working with organizations like The Library of Congress, John Hopkins University and Teradyne. Industries like media and entertainment, life sciences, education, oil and gas and financial services run large-scale compute workloads and are consistently in need of more computing power. Combined with Azure, Avere’s technology and team will strengthen Microsoft’s existing capabilities in compute capacity and performance requirements, ensuring customers have the most flexible, secure and scalable hybrid cloud solution in the marketplace.
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