The Coolest Business Analytics Companies Of The 2021 Big Data 100
Part 1 of CRN’s Big Data 100 includes a look at the vendors solution providers should know in the big data business analytics space.
They’re All Business
Business analysis and data visualization software are critical components of the big data technology stack. They are the tools that business analysts and information workers use to gain understanding and insight from the increasingly huge volumes of data assets businesses are generating today and to share that knowledge throughout an organization.
The global business intelligence and analytics software market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.9 percent from $23.9 billion in 2020 to $33.8 billion in 2026, according to market researcher Valuates.
As part of the 2021 Big Data 100, we’ve put together a list of business analytics software companies—from well-established vendors to those in startup mode—that solution providers should be aware of.
These vendors offer everything from self-service reporting and data visualization tools for nontechnical managers and business users to sophisticated business analysis software that helps data analysts and data scientists tackle the most complex analytical tasks.
Many business analytics platforms today incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to boost their capabilities.
This week CRN is running the Big Data 100 list in slide shows, organized by technology category, with vendors of business analytics software, database systems, data management and integration software, data science and machine learning tools, and big data systems and platforms.
(Some vendors market big data products that span multiple technology categories. They appear in the slide show for the technology segment in which they are most prominent.)
Ahana
Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Steven Mih
Ahana, which just launched in 2020, is one of several companies building big data systems around Presto, the high-performance distributed SQL query engine for distributed data residing in a variety of sources.
The startup, based in San Mateo, Calif., develops PrestoDB-based ad-hoc analytics software. In late 2020 the company launched the Ahana Cloud for Presto managed service and earlier this year expanded the service with new data lake caching and security capabilities.
Ahana raised $4.8 million in seed round funding last year from investors that included GV (formerly Google Ventures).
Alteryx
Top Executive: CEO Mark Anderson
Alteryx markets the Alteryx Analytic Process Automation (APA) Platform, a complete big data analysis system that includes data analytics, data science, machine learning and business process automation capabilities.
In 2020 Alteryx, based in Irvine, Calif., and publicly traded, recorded sales of $495.3 million, up 18.5 percent from $417.9 million one year before.
In October 2020 the company announced that board member Mark Anderson would succeed CEO Dean Stoecker, who founded the company in 1997. Stoecker remains as chairman of the company’s board and was also named executive chairman.
Anderson’s appointment was among a number of recent executive hires at the company including former Palo Alto Networks and F5 Networks executive Dean Darwin as chief revenue officer and former Adobe executive Suresh Vittal as chief product officer.
AtScale
Top Executive: CEO Christopher Lynch
AtScale’s Intelligent Data Virtualization platform provides cloud-based OLAP (online analytical processing) analytics for distributed data—no matter where it resides. AtScale’s system incorporates the company’s Intelligent Data Virtualization, Autonomous Data Engineering and Universal Symantec Layer technology.
In February the Boston-based company hired Josh Epstein as chief marketing officer. Epstein was CMO at ObserveIT through its acquisition by Proofpoint.
Aunalytics
Top Executive: CEO Tracy Graham
The Aunalytics Data Platform provides “insights-as-a-service” through its universal data access, advanced analytics and AI capabilities and can unify disparate data silos into a single record of accurate, actionable business information.
The company’s product portfolio also includes its recently debuted Daybreak datamart system that includes industry-specific data models and built-in queries and AI. The product initially targets the financial services industry with editions for other vertical industries to follow.
In February Aunalytics, based in South Bend, Ind., acquired Naveego, a Traverse City, Mich.-based developer of data integration and data quality management software. The acquisition of Naveego and its technology will allow Aunalytics to expand the data integration, data accuracy, data quality and data governance capabilities of its platform.
Databricks
Top Executive: CEO Ali Ghodsi
Databricks, founded in 2013 by the developers of the popular Spark big data processing engine, is one of the hottest big data startups in recent years and many expect the company to go public sometime this year. That anticipation was heightened in February after the company raised $1 billion in Series G financing that rocketed the company’s post-money valuation to $28 billion.
The big data analysis company’s product portfolio includes the Databricks Unified Data Service and the Databricks Lakehouse Platform—the latter a system that combines attributes of traditional data warehouses with data lakes used to store huge volumes of unorganized data.
Databricks also develops big data tools such as the Delta Engine query execution software and SQL Analytics for running SQL queries against massive data lakes.
Domo
Top Executive: Founder, CEO Josh James
Domo’s popular business analytics and visualization platform collects data from operational applications and systems and presents the analytical results to decision makers in real time.
At the company’s annual Domopalooza conference in March Domo unveiled more than 100 new features to its cloud-based system, including Dataset Views and Analyzer that support “data literacy” by making it easier for users to understand, interact with and leverage data.
Domo also unveiled Domo Everywhere, an edition of its business intelligence system that organizations can embed within their own applications.
Publicly held Domo, based in American Fork, Utah, reported revenue of $210.2 million for all of fiscal 2021 ended Jan. 31, up more than 21 percent from fiscal 2020.
GoodData
Top Executive: Founder, CEO Roman Stanek
GoodData’s business intelligence and analytics platform provides users with business reporting, dashboards and ad hoc analytical capabilities. The company has traditionally focused its technology on embedded analytics and earlier this year GoodData extended the “data storytelling” capabilities of its software for improved data literacy.
More recently the San Francisco-based company has expanded into providing Data-as-a-Service capabilities for customers through a number of cloud platforms and cloud databases.
Incorta
Top Executive: CEO Scott Jones
Incorta develops “direct data analytics” software that aggregates large volumes of complex data in real time for analysis without the need to collect and prepare data beforehand in a data warehouse. The key to the company’s software is its “Direct Data Mapping” technology that pre-processes incoming data, eliminating the need for it to be aggregated or transformed before analysis.
In January the San Mateo, Calif.-based company hired former Alteryx President Scott Jones as CEO. Co-founder and former CEO Osama Elkady remains as CTO.
Infor/Birst
Top Executive: CEO Kevin Samuelson
Birst is a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics system with a unique data model designed to connect users throughout an organization through “a network of virtualized BI instances in a common base of analysis.” The software connects insight from various teams, helping users make informed decisions using a shared knowledge base.
Birst was acquired by enterprise application developer Infor in 2017.
Kyligence
Top Executive: CEO Luke Han
Kyligence offers an AI-enhanced analytics platform that’s capable of delivering sub-second query response time against petabytes of data. The Kyligence system is based on Apache Kylin, a distributed analytics engine for performing multi-dimensional analysis on huge datasets.
The original Kylin technology was developed by the founders of Kyligence, who launched the San Jose, Calif.-based company to provide a commercial version of the open-source technology with added capabilities and services. At the system’s core is OLAP (online analytical processing) functionality that pre-aggregates data in multidimensional indexes, greatly accelerating queries and data analysis.
In January the company released Kyligence Cloud 4, the first cloud-native release of the Kylin platform.
Last week Kyligence announced that it had raised $70 million in Series D funding.
Kyvos Insights
Top Executive: Founder, CEO Praveen Kankariya
Kyvos Insights, based in Los Gatos, Calif., develops its BI Acceleration platform using its patented “Smart OLAP” technology that uses machine learning and advanced algorithms to build data aggregates based on massive volumes of data. The aggregated data improves the performance of modern data platforms such as Cloudera and Hadoop, BI tools like Tableau and MicroStrategy, and cloud data warehouses including Snowflake, Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery.
Logi Analytics
Top Executive: General Manager Kevin Greene
Logi Analytics develops interactive data visualization tools for business intelligence and data analytics applications. The McLean, Va.-based company has particularly focused on providing its technology for embedded analytics and in 2020 debuted the Logi Composer platform for building business analytics into operational applications and workflows.
Earlier this month Logi Analytics was acquired by Insightsoftware, a Raleigh, N.C.-based developer of financial reporting applications used by CFOs and their staffs. Insightsoftware will continue to sell the Logi Analytics tools as well as pair them with its own products.
(Insightsoftware dived even deeper into the embedded analytics space with its April 15 acquisition of Izenda, also a developer of embedded BI and analytics technology.)
MicroStrategy
Top Executive: CEO Michael Saylor
Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is the largest independent, publicly traded business intelligence company. The company’s flagship platform provides a range of data reporting, analytics, discovery and visualization capabilities. The company’s HyperIntelligence tools are used to embed business intelligence into applications that employees use every day.
MicroStrategy, based in Tysons Corner, Va., also markets mobile software and cloud-based services.
Ocient
Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Chris Gladwin
Startup Ocient develops database and data analytics software that is capable of ingesting, managing and analyzing massive volumes of structured data—multiple petabytes and even exabytes of data, according to the Chicago-based company.
The company’s proprietary Ocient DAS (data analytics solutions) technology includes an ultra-large-scale relational database with trillions and even quadrillions of row and columns. The system also includes analytics software written for specific use cases.
Ocient raised $40 million in Series B funding in January, money the company will use to expand its operations and double its employee head count by the end of this year.
OmniSci
Top Executive: Founder, CEO Todd Mostak
OmniSci develops interactive query and data visualization software that leverages high-performance GPU hardware to analyze and extract insight from large datasets.
At the heart of the San Francisco-based company’s converged analytics platform is the OmniSciDB analytical database and SQL engine. It also includes the company’s Immerse data visualization software and data science tools.
Promethium
Top Executive: Founder, CEO Kaycee Lai
Promethium addresses the challenges of self-service data discovery and business analytics with its Data Navigation System. The platform uses machine learning algorithms and natural language processing to quickly provide everyday information workers with the data and insight they seek.
The Promethium system connects on-premises and cloud data without moving or copying it and automates data preparation, assembly and visualization tasks.
Pyramid Analytics
Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Omri Kohl
Pyramid Analytics develops an enterprise-scale business analytics platform that it describes as “the Analytics OS.” The system performs a number of business intelligence functions including data discovery, analytics, reporting, and data preparation and modeling,
Pyramid, based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, offers editions of its system for specific vertical sectors including financial services, manufacturing, insurance, retail, government, education and health care.
Qlik
Top Executive: CEO Mike Capone
Qlik offers and end-to-end business analytics and data integration platform that includes the flagship Qlik Sense self-service data discovery, analytics and visualization software and the QlikView guided analytics software.
Based in King of Prussia, Pa., Qlik extended its data integration offerings in 2019 when it bought Attunity and its data integration technology.
Qlik has been especially active this year in providing business analytics for data generated by SAP applications, recently developing a unified SAP connector for Qlik’s analytics system and SAP-focused data and analytics solution accelerators. Qlik also has worked with Snowflake and Amazon Web Services to accelerate cloud analytics using SAP data.
Salesforce/Tableau
Top Executive: Tableau President, CEO Mark Nelson
Tableau offers one of the most popular data analytics and interactive visualization platforms in the industry. The Tableau Platform includes Tableau Server, Tableau Desktop and Tableau Online editions, as well as the Tableau Prep data preparation tools and other products.
Tableau was acquired by Salesforce in 2019 for $15.7 billion, but the company has continued to operate as an independent subsidiary.
In March Tableau debuted the 2021.1 release of its platform that incorporated Salesforce’s Einstein Discovery predictive modeling and machine learning technology, boosting Tableau’s predictive analysis capabilities.
CEO Adam Selipsky remained Tableau’s top executive following the acquisition by Salesforce. But in March Selipsky left to become the new CEO of Amazon Web Services. Mark Nelson, previously executive vice president of product development at Tableau, was named Selipsky’s replacement.
SAS
Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Jim Goodnight
Privately owned SAS remains one of the industry’s biggest business analytics software companies with its broad portfolio of analytics, data mining, artificial intelligence and data management software, as well as analytical software for specific tasks such as marketing analytics, fraud detection and security, risk management, and Internet of Things solutions.
The SAS Viya analytic, AI and data management platform is the company’s flagship product. In February SAS made the cloud-native SAS Viya available on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, as well as offering analytical applications such as Predict & Plan Consumer Demand through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
In January SAS, based in Cary, N.C., promoted Bryan Harris, most recently senior vice president and head of engineering, to executive vice president and CTO.
Sisense
Top Executive: CEO Amir Orad
The Sisense extensible data analytics platform is used to embed analytics into business processes, workflows and applications—what Sisense calls “infused analytics”—using the platform’s extensive set of APIs.
In February the company unveiled Sisence Fusion, an AI-driven analytics system that’s designed to bring actionable intelligence to employee- and customer-facing applications by providing analytical results through more easily consumed and actionable formats.
Based in New York, Sisense raised $100 million in funding in January 2020.
Starburst
Top Executive: CEO Justin Borgman
Starburst Data develops Starburst Enterprise for Presto, the company’s commercial offering of the Presto open-source, distributed SQL query engine for finding and analyzing data that resides in a variety of distributed data sources.
Presto is capable of querying data where it resides without having to move it—a major advantage in cloud and hybrid IT environments with increasingly scattered data sources. That makes it a more cost-efficient alternative to traditional data warehouse systems.
Founded in 2017, Starburst raised $100 million in Series C funding in January, bringing the Boston-based company’s total funding to $164 million and its market cap to $1.2 billion. In November 2020 the company launched Starburst Orbit, the company’s first partner program.
Tellius
Top Executive: Founder, CEO Ajay Khanna
Tellius, based in Reston, Va., develops business analytics and AI technology to provide what it calls a “guided insights” platform that helps business users and analytics teams ask questions in natural language and quickly discover business insights—what market researcher Gartner has designated as “augmented analytics.”
At the heart of the Tellius system is the Tellius Genius AI Engine that provides the natural language processing, machine learning and predictive analysis capabilities.
ThoughtSpot
Top Executive: CEO Sudheesh Nair
ThoughtSpot’s business intelligence system relies on search- and AI-driven analytics, helping users generate insight from potentially billions of rows of data
In March ThoughtSpot, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., struck a deal to buy SeekWell, a developer of technology that will allow ThoughtSpot users to better operationalize analytical results within business applications.
In October 2020 ThoughtSpot added the ThoughtSpot DataFlow feature to its business analytics platform, making it possible to load data from source databases and file systems into the Falcon in-memory database that powers the ThoughtSpot system. That allows users to connect to data sources and schedule data synchronizations—all without coding.
In 2019 ThoughtSpot raised $248 million in funding, putting its value at close to $2 billion. In March of this year data cloud service provider Snowflake acquired an equity stake in ThoughtSpot with a $20 million investment.
Tibco
Top Executive: CEO Dan Streetman
Tibco entered 2021 by closing its acquisition of business analytics pioneer Information Builders, announced in October, on Jan. 5 for an undisclosed sum. Tibco is now undertaking the challenging work of combining the two companies’ operations and product lines.
Tibco plans to add Information Builders’ flagship WebFocus business analytics and reporting platform to its product lineup and enrich its Hyperconverged Analytics business analytics strategy. Information Builders’ data quality, preparation and integration products are being added to the Tibco Any Data Hub and Tibco Responsive Application Mesh strategies.
Tibco is already a major player in the business analytics and big data management arena thanks to previous acquisitions such as Spotfire, Jaspersoft, Statistica, Alpine Data Labs and SnappyData. But the Information Builders acquisition was its largest and the industry will be watching to see how well the company leverages its expanded product portfolio.