Which big data funding rounds have made news in the month of June?
Sidecar, the big-data enabled marketing solutions provider has raised $3 million. This funding round was led by Osage Venture Partners, backed by NextStage Capital, Gabriel Investments, Innovation Ventures, Ben Franklin, Mid-Atlantic Angel Group, Technology Partners, Robinhood Ventures, and ARC Angel Group.
The CEO of Sidecar, Andre Golsorkhi says he plans to utilize the latest funding in expanding his manpower strength in the next two or three months, which will include data scientists, engineers, sales & marketing, and product management staff.
Sidecar’s business strategy includes gradually replacing the traditional marketing technologies and agencies by creating a powerful data-driven platform from the combined website, catalog, consumer, and competitive data channels. Mr. Golsorkhi further added That the idea is to take human resources out to increase automated decision making, across the entire catalog, so that the clients benefits from reduced costs and increased profits.
CloudPhysics, a predictive-analytics service provider for virtual datacenter management, has secured $15 million in capital funding in a Series C round. This funding round was led by Jafco Ventures. The existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield, and Byers and Mayfield, also participated in this round. Till date, this firm has managed to raise a total of $27.5 million.
According to Silicon Valley Business Journal report, CloudPhysics plans to utilize the funds in further developing its SaaS solution. The groundbreaking solutions offered by this provider exploit big data technologies to explore and discover operational trouble-spots before they surface and recommends radical operational improvements in virtual-IT operations management. The company also plans to use part of the funds in scaling its business. The company just announced the latest release of its predictive analytics solution, Storage Analytics.
Jeb Miller, General Partner at Jafco Ventures and CloudPhysics Board Member, says
This is a very exciting time for CloudPhysics as it brings to market a fundamentally new approach to IT operations management. Through Big Data analytics, CloudPhysics is shifting the focus of infrastructure management from reactive to predictive, enabling more intelligent and cost-effective IT. Jafco Ventures didnt want to miss this opportunity to invest in CloudPhysics and its vision, and were excited to bring the full range of Jafcos resources into the mix to help the company ramp in the market.
CloudPhysics, founded in 2011, collects a daily stream of more than 140 billion data samples from its global user base to explore, identify, troubleshoot, and solve operational problems in virtualized IT centers. Could Physics has won many awards and accolades in recognition of its innovation, which earned the company a place in the following lists:
- Tech Target list of top 10 Virtualization Company to Watch in 2014
- Network World list of top 10 Big Data Startup to Watch
- Business Insider listof21 hottest startups.
According to Wall street Journal, Cisco Canada Innovation Program, together with Canadas Finance Minister, the Hon. Joe Oliver, announced that Cisco Investments has committed $150 million to the Cisco Canada Innovation Program. The primary objective behind this future investment is to support and drive innovation in Canada. As part of this mission, Cisco Investments will provide venture-capital funds, technology directions, and go-to-market expertise to Canadian business.
Cisco’s investment plan will be rolled out in the next 10 years across a mix of technologies, businesses, and investment stages. Cisco will take an active role in interacting with investment partners and start-upsnot only for nurturing new leaders and innovators, but also for inspiring other organizations to recognize Canada’s tremendous talent, and the availability of commercial opportunities.
The Cisco Canada Innovation Program will focus on technology-sector investment opportunities, venture capital investments for innovation in technology, and mentoring early-stage companies to stimulate business growth.
Cisco Investments has a solid reputation in funding hundreds of companies across different segments over the past 20 years. Currently, Cisco enjoys a portfolio of $2 billion with over 80 worldwide investments. Cisco also holds Limited Partner positions in over 35 funds globally.
Hilton Romanski, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Cisco says
Canada is a great place to do business, with tremendous potential for innovative ideas. Ciscos investment focus is on strategic opportunities that align with our business today and with potential future disruptions that may shape the broader, global market and ecosystem. We see many opportunities in Canada and look forward to enhancing our global portfolio with additional venture funding in Canadas innovation ecosystem.
Rhiza just closed a $3 million funding round. This startup, founded by Josh Knauer, provides marketing analytics tools to assist sales staff achieve big- data enabled marketing solutions. Knauer plans to use the funds to expand the companys sales efforts while maintaining top-notch marketing and customer service operations. The funding comes at a time when the market demand for Rhiza products has been steadily growing. The company believes that with the new funds, they will not only better serve our current clients, but also reach new audiences and refine our innovative tools for visualizing, analyzing, and sharing data.
Focusing on consumer marketing analytics will allow us to significantly scale the company over the coming years across many vertical channels such as consumer packaged goods, healthcare/pharma, retail chains and others, said Knauer in an interview with VentureBeat.
Rhiza, designed to optimize revenue streams, can provide unique, customized recommendations based on consumer insights. Until recently, Rhiza has focused on serving major media companies and counts Univision, Comcast and Cox Media among its clients. Rhiza’s target user base includes non-technical users like executives, marketers, or salespeople across all platforms.
Big Data Partnership, EMEA’s leading big data specialist solution provider, has announced the completion of a £1.25 million round of Series A funding round with Beringea, an international growth capital firm. The new funding will be broadly used to expand the core solution team, which includes engineers, data scientists, sales and marketing staffto meet increasing demand from enterprise customers.
The BDP team offers scalable and reliable big-data-related solutions with a firm objective of uncovering new revenue streams and developing customized solutions to meet exact requirements. Big Data Partnership specializes in big data consulting, training, and support services for across verticals including defense, telecoms, utilities, web, financial services, and media.
Trevor Hope, Chief Investment Officer, Beringea LLP, manager of the ProVen VCTs, comments:
Big Data is a widely used term; although most organisations appreciate its potential promise they still face adoption and deployment challenges. Demand for big data skills continues to outstrip supply and Big Data Partnership is one of the few companies addressing this gap and offering a legitimate way to push industry forward.
Trevor Hope will join Big Data Partnership’s board.
Mike Merritt-Holmes, co-founder and CEO of Big Data Partnership, comments:
The explosion of interest in big data and machine learning is transforming the workplace, as businesses increasingly seek new ways to capitalise on their fast-growing datasets. We are overcoming the incumbent challenges by helping enterprises navigate the rapidly evolving technology landscape of modern data platforms such as NoSQL, Hadoop and search technologies.
Founded in 2012, Big Data Partnership offers big data solutions, certified training, service support. Big Data Partnership partners with world’s leading big data technology providers including Hortonworks, IBM, DataStax, MapR Technologies, Elasticsearch, and Microsoft’s HDInsight.
