eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Collibra, which makes automated data governance software, has closed $50 million in Series C financing led by San Francisco-based ICONIQ Capital with participation from investment firm Battery Ventures and return backers Dawn Capital, Index Ventures and Newion Investments.
This latest round of funding will enable Collibra to invest in new development, sales and marketing as the company continues its rapid global growth, CEO and co-founder Felix Van de Maele told eWEEK.
To date, Collibra has secured more than $75 million in venture funding. With this investment, Matt Jacobson, General Partner with ICONIQ, will join the Collibra board of directors. Battery Ventures General Partner Dharmesh Thakker will join the board as an observer.
Brings a ‘Shopper’s Approach’ to Finding the Right Data
New York City-based Collibra brings a “data shopper’s” approach to the task of finding and analyzing volumes of data.
Collibra last October introduced Collibra Catalog, a new data catalog that the company claims helps data scientists and citizen data analysts spend less time looking for data and more time solving critical business challenges.
“I guess you could call this the ‘Amazonification’ of the data set,” CTO and co-founder Stijn Christiaens told eWEEK. “People have all kinds of difficulties finding and understanding the data that’s out there, but the first problem you have is you can’t find the data. Then when you find it, you don’t know what it means, or who’s responsible for it, where it came from or whether you can get access to it.
“People spend a lot of their time doing that, so that’s why we call ours the ‘Amazon experience.’ Amazon saves you from going through a library or a bookshop and asking the clerk or surfing the bookshelves. When it comes to data, this is cumbersome. We give the same experience; you come in, you search for customer data or product data or churn data or what have you. We come back with a number of results. It can be results from previously created data sets—certified or non-certified data sets.”
Collibra Catalog is available as part of Collibra’s most recent platform release, v5.0, a data governance package with an intuitive user interface designed for non-IT employees. The Collibra platform can be cloud-based or on-premises, whichever works best for the user.
Finding Data the Way Consumers Find Products
Collibra 5.0 takes a consumerized approach to data governance technology that enables business users to research and find data in much the same way as they shop for products normally on consumer sites, such as Amazon and iTunes. It then gives data researchers and other line-of-business (LOB) employees a head start on finding the right data and putting it to immediate use.
Organizations are increasingly adopting data governance as a system of record to help them exercise control over processes and methods employed by data users to improve data quality. The Collibra integrated data governance platform helps hundreds of organizations across the globe in industries, including financial services, retail, health care, education, technology, government and others find, understand and trust the data they need to be data-driven enterprises.
“Data’s day has come. And with that, organizations have recognized that data can only be leveraged as a strategic resource to the extent it can be accessed and, most important, trusted,” Van de Maele said.