Data presented during the Big Data Analytics & Business Intelligence event sponsored by the Observatory of the School of Management at the Polytechnic University of Milan, evaluated the Analytics market in Italy as recording growth of more than 15%, with a total value of more than 900 million euros. Although Business Intelligence is still predominant in the data sector, with a value of 722 million euros, it is Big Data, with a quota value that reached 183 million euros last year, which is establishing itself as the sector component facing the most significant market growth with + 44%.
Startups and Big Data: why?
Various studies and surveys at international level, such as that conducted by Gartner last year, have estimated that 90% of companies will have taken a CDO on board by 2019 in order to gain a competitive edge on the market, support changes in terms of digitization and innovation, and better manage resources and enhance them through effective data governance. The Big Data marketplace offers ever-newer types of business intelligence, and analytics platforms are increasingly meeting the management requirements of companies, but also accessibility, agility and more detailed insights. These latest generation systems have contributed to the development of startups that work to gather, manage and analyze data.
The best sector startups in 2016
Last year, according to the CRN technology news site, the best startups in the Big Data sector were:
Confluent, founded by the original developers of Apache Kafka, which has created a real-time data platform that acts as a highly scalable messaging system. The software can be used for data collection as well as for user activity logs.
Anodot, created in 2015, which has developed software based on a patented machine learning algorithm that automates data analysis by highlighting business opportunities and performance issues. The aim is to detect anomalies in large amounts of data in order to bring about improvements for business. Last year, it raised more than 8 million dollars in funding.
Koverse, which has developed a Data Lake platform that makes it possible to collect Big Data and put them into production in a much shorter time and at lower cost than other available technologies. The company is based in Seattle and was set up in 2012.
Maana, which has developed the Maana Knowledge Platform, based on Apache Spark, which is useful for research and analysis of data from numerous systems and silos. The company is based in Palo Alto and was established in 2012, but had its official market launch in May 2015. In September 2016, it launched the Winter Edition 17 of its product, with new applications that can optimize business processes. Last year, the company raised over 26 million dollars in funding, mostly from clients in the oil and industrial sector: Shell, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, Intel and General Electric.
Pachyderm, which was founded in 2014 and raised more than 2 million dollars in funding last year. The company has developed an open source analytics engine that aims to provide a containerized-type modular and scalable data analysis framework through tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
Talena, which supplies Big Data management software that can help businesses protect valuable data assets through backup and recovery services, test and development management, as well as archiving via Hadoop, NoSQL and Cassandra and Couchbase, as well as Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Vertica. Last year, Talena presented ActiveRx, a predictive analysis infrastructure based on machine learning.
An expanding market?
According to market researcher Wikibo estimates, the Big Data market is expected to gradually increase with an annual growth rate of 14.4% and reach the quota of more than 92 billion dollars by 2026. The American AngelList site reports that to date there are 4,633 startups specialized in Big Data with an average rating of about 4.5 billion dollars.
Emma Pietrafesa
