Data analytics is becoming one of the fastest-growing parts of the information technology industry and could be worth $50bn globally over the next five years, according to Wikibon, an online community for the technology sector. Though several market leaders have been acquired by large IT groups, much of the innovation in the big data sector has continued to come from smaller, independent ventures. Such “pure-play” vendors had revenues of about £480m in 2011, or about 10 per cent of overall revenue for the sector, according to Jeffrey Kelly, big data analyst at Wikibon. Here are some of the sector’s more innovative companies that are aiming to grow in 2013.
Like many of the big data pioneers, San Francisco-based Splunk was founded in the first years of the new millennium. The company launched an initial public offering in April 2012, with shares more than doubling on the first day of trading. Its market capitalisation is currently $2.9bn. Splunk’s 2011 revenues were $45m, according to Wikibon.
Greenplum was founded in 2003 by Scott Yara (above) and Luke Lonergan. In 2010 it became part of the IT big league as a division of EMC, the data storage group, which bought it for an estimated $400m. Yara and Lonergan remain on board as part of Greenplum’s management team. Wikibon puts the venture’s 2011 revenues at $43m.
Nate Silver began his political forecasting in 2008, but it was his New York Times blog – where he correctly predicted the result of the recent US presidential election – won by Barack Obama – that made Silver one of the most revered data-crunchers in the world. His book, The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction, has become a US bestseller.
Silicon Valley-based Cloudera is a leading provider of software and services based on Apache Hadoop, an open-source framework that is used by technology companies such as Facebook and Amazon. The company was founded by Christophe Bisciglia, Amr Awadallah, Jeff Hammerbacher and Mike Olson (above), veterans from Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Oracle, and achieved revenues of $18m in 2011, according to Wikibon.
Tableau Software was created by a group of PhD students at Stanford University who came up with a graphical, rather than text-based, method of analysing data. Tableau, which is run from Seattle by Christian Chabot, its chief executive and co-founder, has 10,000 customers in a range of sectors, from agriculture to transport.
Aster Data placed its future in the hands of a larger competitor in 2011 when it was acquired by Teradata for $295m. Its parent has a market capitalisation of more than $10bn. Another success story from Stanford University (pictured), Aster’s customers include companies such as LinkedIn,the professional networking site, and Razorfish, the digital advertising agency. Wikibon says Aster’s revenues were $52m in 2011.
Opera Solutions made revenues of $75m in 2011, according to Wikibon, making it one of the highest-earning “pure-play” ventures in the sector. The group, which has its headquarters in New York rather than Silicon Valley, was founded in 2004 by Arnab Gupta, a former partner at McKinsey, the consultancy.
Palantir Technologies’ products include software used by the US intelligence community to combat terrorism. The Palo Alto-based company – named after a magical stone in J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga – was set up in 2004 by a group that included Peter Thiel (above), co-founder of PayPal, and Alex Karp, the current chief executive.
Bill James changed the face of baseball with his statistical tools for analysing the sport, known as “sabermetrics”. He was working in a factory in the 1970s when he came up with his approach, but was subsequently hired by the Boston Red Sox team. James has also published many books on baseball, and his website is a must-read for devotees of the sport.
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