‘Big data’ startup RainStor pulls in $12M

RainStor is the second startup today to announce a multimillion-dollar fundraise in the “big data” market (Trifacta, which just raised $4.3M, is the other).

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":545152,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"big-data,cloud,enterprise,entrepreneur,","session":"D"}']

San Francisco-based RainStor pulled in $12 million today for relational database products that allow new ways to store large amounts of data.

Companies of all sizes are increasingly looking to exploit big data — vast stores of both unstructured (texts, emails, reports, and so on) and structured data — for business insights. As a result, there is no shortage in venture capital funding for big data startups that have the security and scalability required to sell their product to large enterprises.

RainStor runs on the Hadoop Distributed File System, which means it can scale out its data storage and analytics capabilities, potentially to multi-perabyte data volumes. According to the company, its technology is easier to use than most and doesn’t require a staff member to have specialized database administrator (DBA) skills.

They call it “NewSQL,” as it’s a novel approach to a decades-old technology and is designed to run on-premise or in the cloud. What’s interesting here is that most startups in this space have heralded the death of the relational database.

The startup will use the funding to step up its sales and marketing efforts. To succeed, it will need to win customers from competitors in the big data space, which include traditional players like EMC, and startups such as CopperEye.

RainStor’s third round was led by Credit Suisse and Rogers Venture Partners, with participation by existing investors Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, Storm Ventures and The Dow Chemical Company. This most recent round brings the company’s total funding to $23.5 million.

Photo via Shutterstock