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 M&A activity, people movements, funding news, industry partnerships, customer wins, 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@insidebigdata.com. Be sure to Tweet Above the Trend Line articles using the hashtag: #abovethetrendline.
This week Fall quarter 2020 starts at UCLA and I’m scheduled to teach two classes of Introduction to Data Science! I greatly enjoy leading new data scientists into this great profession. It’s such a great time to buckle down and learn, learn, learn … For now though let’s get to the industry rumor mill starting with new funding news … Coralogix announced it has raised a $25 million Series B funding round, bringing the company’s total amount raised to $41.2 million. New investors Red Dot Capital Partners and O.G. Tech Ventures (backed by Eyal Ofer) co-led the round with participation from existing investors Aleph VC, StageOne Ventures, Janvest Capital Partners, and 2B Angels. Barak Salomon of Red Dot Capital partners and Roy Oron of O.G. Tech Partners will join the board of directors. … Coiled, the modern solution for seamlessly scaling data science, machine learning, and AI in Python, announced it has raised a $5 million Seed round co-led by Costanoa Ventures and IA Ventures, with other backers including Kaggle co-founders, Anthony Goldbloom and Ben Hamner, and Techammer, spearheaded by Cloudera co-founder, Jeff Hammerbacher … Macrometa Corporation, the edge computing company enabling web and cloud native developers to build and run applications across a network of global clouds and data centers, announced the close of a $7M Seed Stage. The new round was led by DNX Ventures, with the participation from existing investors Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV), Partech Partners, Fusion Fund, Sway Ventures, Velar Capital and Shasta Ventures. The new funds will be used to accelerate the product rollout and sales of Macrometa’s award winning Global Data Network (GDN), a cloud service that enables web and cloud developers to build and run high performance, multi-region, multi cloud, globally distributed, stateful data powered applications and web services … San Diego-based machine learning software developer Point Predictive has raised a new, Series B growth financing round, the company announced. Size of the new funding round was not announced. Point Predictive said the round was led by Napier Park Financial Partners, and also included prior investor Mosaik Partners. As part of the funding, the company has named Michael Housman as Chief Technology Officer and promoted Eric Werab to Chief Revenue Officer. Housman was most recently Chief Data Science Officer at RappportBoost.ai. Steve Piaker, a Partner at Napier Park Financial Partners, also joins the company’s board witht he funding. Point Predictive is led by CEO Time Grace; the company’s machine learning software is used for automotive lending risk management … Los Angeles-based Beyond Limits, a startup which is developing artificial intelligence software for the industrial and enterprise market, said that it has raised $133M in a Series C funding round. According to the company, it has closed on $113M of that funding, with another $20M committed in the round. The funding was led by Group 42 and bp ventures. Beyond Limits is led by CEO and founder AJ Abdallat. The company says its artificial intelligence software “human-like reasoning to solve problems, much like how humans form conclusions using inference and logic.” The company says its software is based on software originally developed at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA space missions. Beyond Limits said the new funding will go to expand its business, both in the US and abroad; the company says it will use some of that funding to Beyond Limits Asia, with regional headquarters in Singapore and operations in Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo, as well as expansion across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia … Ahana, the self-service analytics company for Presto, announced an additional investment of $2.3 million in seed financing led by new investor Lux Capital, along with participation from existing investor GV (formerly Google Ventures), bringing total funds raised to $4.8 million. Ahana has also expanded its technical team with three new co-founders adding top Presto and core database talent from Alibaba, Uber and Walmart, each responsible for running major Presto deployments.
In M&A news we found … Veritas Technologies, a global leader in data protection, availability and insights, announced that it has acquired Globanet, a privately held software company based in Los Angeles, California. The acquisition further extends Veritas’ strong portfolio of digital compliance and governance offerings to give customers native visibility into over 80 new content sources. Globanet provides comprehensive compliance and intelligent communications solutions to enterprises, including Globanet Merge1™ … Jumio, a leading provider of AI-powered end-to-end identity verification and eKYC solutions, announced that the company acquired the AML platform from Beam Solutions, a San Francisco-based startup focused on transaction monitoring and KYC. Jumio will integrate Beam’s suite of AML solutions into its current KYX Platform to further strengthen the company’s position in the anti-financial crime marketplace. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed … – Imperva, Inc., the cybersecurity leader whose mission is to protect data and all paths to it, announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire jSonar, a leader in modern database security. The acquisition will pioneer a bold new approach to securing data through all paths, including on-premises, cloud, multi-cloud and Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), delivering an integrated approach across data and applications.
We also learned of a number of new partnerships, alignments and collaborations … VMware and NVIDIA announced a broad partnership to deliver both an end-to-end enterprise platform for AI and a new architecture for data center, cloud and edge that uses NVIDIA® DPUs (data processing units) to support existing and next-generation applications. Through this collaboration, the rich set of AI software available on the NVIDIA NGCTM hub will be integrated into VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware Tanzu. This will help accelerate AI adoption, enabling enterprises to extend existing infrastructure for AI, manage all applications with a single set of operations, and deploy AI-ready infrastructure where the data resides, across the data center, cloud and edge … Aternity®, the enterprise-class Digital Experience Management Company™, announced it has partnered with Intel™ to combine its enterprise-class end-user experience analytics technology with Intel’s latest business client platform to deliver enhanced visibility into the employee experience. By enabling Aternity’s Digital Experience Management Platform to collect additional platform telemetry from Intel business client PCs, enterprise IT departments will have greater ability to proactively identify and remediate poor user experiences and device issues. As part of the partnership, Intel’s enterprise customers will have access to a version of Aternity’s Digital Experience Management (DEM) Platform that offers more data, new use cases, and deeper insights that help address the challenges of the Work-from-Home environment … Qlik® deepened its strategic partnership with Google Cloud with a new joint offering focused on enabling customers to increase the value of their SAP data with Google BigQuery. Optimized to support SAP data on Google Cloud and Google BigQuery, and reinforced with Qlik’s new ‘SAP on Google Cloud Expertise’ designation, Google Cloud customers now have an integrated solution they can confidently deploy with Qlik Data Integration to help drive more use and value from all their data … Demand intelligence company, PredictHQ, announced today a collaboration with Amazon to provide all event data around the world to Amazon’s Alexa platform so Alexa users can ask what events are happening around them anytime. The new Events Near Me feature provides Alexa users with a list of all local events, such as sports, conferences, concerts, festivals, expos, performing arts and community events … Iguazio, the data science platform built for production and real-time machine learning applications, announced a strategic partnership with Faktion, a boutique, end-to-end Artificial Intelligence (AI) service provider for smart mobility technologies across Europe. The partnership enables both companies to provide AI software infrastructure and services to smart mobility companies looking to harness big data and create AI applications that make travel in cities safer, greener, and more efficient. The two companies already have several joint European customers in the Smart Mobility space, tackling challenges such as dynamic congestion charges based on real-time data and detecting and acting upon driver fatigue. WANdisco (WAND.L), the LiveData company, announced their global agreement with Infosys, a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. Together, WANdisco and Infosys will help enterprises to successfully migrate their data lakes to major public clouds including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud … Actian, a leader in hybrid cloud data warehousing and data integration, announced a strategic partnership with enterprise data protection provider Sotero. This partnership incorporates Sotero’s KeepEncrypt 360 solution into the Actian Avalanche™ hybrid cloud data warehouse service, extending Avalanche’s enterprise-class security.
In new people movement news we heard … As the next step in its growth strategy, Narrative, the enterprise data streaming company, announced the appointment of Steven Schwartz in the new position of Chief Operating Officer (COO). Schwartz will report directly to Founder and CEO Nick Jordan. As COO, Schwartz will oversee Narrative’s business operations, including the execution of partner strategy, finance, sales, and day-to-day operations, and will work directly with senior management to help drive a repeatable, predictable high-growth business. In addition, Schwartz will be focused on driving visibility and momentum for Narrative as it continues to shape and define the Data Streaming category … Talend (NASDAQ: TLND), a global leader in data integration and data integrity, announced it has named Krishna Tammana, as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Krishna, most recently VP of Engineering at Splunk, will be responsible for scaling the product and engineering organizations to drive innovation and Talend’s continued market growth … SoftIron Ltd., a leader in purpose-built and performance-optimized data center solutions, announced the appointment of Craig Chadwell to the role of Vice President of Product to lead the company’s product strategy. Chadwell, who joins SoftIron from Lenovo, will be responsible for managing SoftIron’s flagship HyperDrive® storage, HyperSwitch™ networking, and HyperCast™ transcoding product families, and identifying and developing new product opportunities for SoftIron.
In the new customer wins category we have … Cambridge Semantics, a leading provider of modern, graph-driven data integration for the enterprise data fabric, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has selected Cambridge Semantics as the analytics and integration layer for the FDA’s Intelligent Data Lake. The FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) has begun a new strategic initiative to enhance its enterprise data architecture and regulatory review. The Intelligent Data Lake, when complete, will provide a platform for integrating data for analytics and insights pertaining to new drug applications, generic formulations, risk evaluation, translational science, and pharmaceutical quality … Iguazio, the data science platform built for production and real-time machine learning applications, announced it has been deployed by mobile software company PadSquad, to improve the relevance and performance of the digital campaigns they run for their customers worldwide.
In the new patents department we learned … – Advanced analytics platform Signals Analytics announced a wide-ranging patent grant from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the automatic extraction of information from unstructured data sources. The patent validates the company’s approach to enterprise AI and analytics using external data at scale, while easing the deployment and data management processes that are typically so difficult for companies to navigate. With the award, Signals Analytics is in a unique position to serve the fast-growing augmented analytics market, as more clients realize that a configurable platform will ultimately help them succeed in their quest to be data-driven as opposed to building a homegrown solution or outsourcing a custom analytic project that is not flexible to support the changing needs of a business.
And finally, we received the following commentary about the Palantir IPO:
“The Palantir IPO is proof that AI- and data-driven software is the future, particularly during this forced remote work period across the globe,” commented Trevor Daughney, VP, product marketing, Exabeam. Though it feels like workers are siloed right now, performing their jobs in isolation, companies’ data shouldn’t be fragmented. On an ongoing basis, researchers, IT administrators and security professionals on the front lines shouldn’t have to sift through multiple tools to get the full picture they need. Palantir, and other complementary companies in the technology space, pull all relevant information into one platform, getting the right data to the right people quickly. While there is some controversy around certain customer use cases, Palantir’s tools have been used for high-profile projects, such as tracking the spread of COVID-19 and helping the CIA in locating Osama bin Laden — confirming that this approach to data analytics is highly valuable. At Exabeam, we utilize similar principles to help security operations and insider threat teams work smarter, whether they’re in the office or working from home. We pull logs from various sources into a central repository to highlight the most critical alerts and organize them so that security professionals rapidly get visibility into the full scope of an attack. Combined with machine learning, this allows security teams to detect anomalous behavior that wouldn’t be possible with human observation alone. Specifically, they can detect lateral movement, notably between cloud applications, cloud infrastructure, on premises IT resources, and OT and IoT devices. This is essential, as 80% of companies across the U.S. and U.K. have seen an increase in attempted cyberattacks since the start of the pandemic. As another company in the data-driven software industry, we look forward to seeing what this major step in Palantir’s business journey will bring.”
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