DataTorrent raises $8M to bring Big Data from real-time to ‘Nowtime’

DataTorrent has raised $8 million to bring data analytics up to warp speed.

The startup claims to take data processing from real time into “now time.” Enterprises that generate continuous streams of large unstructured data can use DataTorrent to process, monitor, analyze, and act on it. Founder Phu Hoang said the system executes at tens of million of data items per second.

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“Data has proliferated and velocity has continued to increase, with the onslaught driven by the growth in the number of mobile phones, financial transactions, advertising, social gaming, online payments, online sensors, and industrial sensors,” said Hoang. “This means there is massive data coming in that needs to be processed. With this comes the fact that businesses more and more need to make sense and act on their data in real time.”

DataTorrent also has an open-sourced library of 250 operators to facilitate quick application development and foster community. The platform is built on to of Hadoop 2.0, which Hoang said provides “unprecedented” scale, load elasticity, and no data-loss. Hadoop is a popular open source computing framework that makes it easier for large corporations to manage large volumes of data that can’t be stored in a traditional database.

Hoang previously worked as the executive vice president of engineering at Yahoo, and cofounder Amol Kekre built the Yahoo quotes streaming service and was a leader in the Hadoop efforts at there. The founders observed a “tectonic shift” happening surrounding “big data” — there are over nine billion devices connected to the Internet, and data generation is also projected to grow to 35 zettabytes in 2020, according to IDC. In the words of my editor, Dylan Tweney, this is a “crapload,” and organizations need increasingly more sophisticated technology to make use of it.

Accordingly, Hadoop startups are attracting millions from investors. Cloudera closed $65 million in December, MapR raised $30 million, and Accel Partners formed a $100 million fund dedicated to big data startups. August Capital led this round, with participation from Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Morado Ventures, and Farzad Nazem who invested in the seed round.

The company is based in Santa Clara and has 12 employees.