Remember master data management from 15 to 20 years ago? In concept, it was a seemingly indispensable component in a true enterprise IT system, because it was deployed to keep track of every bit of data in its lifecycle: how it was used or not used, whether it was stored or archived, or whether it was deleted.
Enterprises generally didn't see the full value of the application, at least in the early days. Those early MDM platforms didn't get a lot of traction for a number of reasons—the main ones being complexity and high cost, which often was more than $1 million per year to install, use and maintain.
Enter startup Reltio, an enterprise data-driven applications and modern data management company, that was founded in 2011 by the team that started Informatica's respected MDM more than a decade ago. Even though it has been providing products and services for more than a year and is said to be profitable, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company on March 16 officially entered the market with the announcement of $10 million in Series A funding from Crosslink Capital and .406 Ventures.
Reltio also unveiled the general availability of its signature offering, Reltio Cloud, which essentially is an all-purpose backstop-type platform that ostensibly fills all the gaps between point products and their separate functions. These functions include Hadoop big data batch analytics, specialized analytic tools, data lakes, and siloed master data management processes.
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Repeating for emphasis: All these functions are available as a single, subscription-based cloud service.
Manish Sood, founder and CEO of Reltio, told eWEEK that Reltio's interface is intuitive enough to be understood and used by line-of-business employees, such as sales, marketing and compliance professionals—rather than just data scientists—and they can use it every day.
"Data is the new natural resource, but it's truly valuable only when it's effectively mined, related and transformed into insight with business actions that can be taken within the context of day-to-day operations," Sood said. "Data is collated and analyzed for actionable intelligence with the speed needed to support innovation and spark new revenue streams. IT gets a modern data management platform, while business users get easy-to-use data-driven applications to address their everyday needs."
Sood said Reltio is aimed at those who use services like Facebook or Linkedin, but he is first aiming at companies in traditional data-intense sectors, such as health care and life sciences, oil and gas, retail and distribution.
Reltio already has several marquee customers and industry data and solution partners. Sood said that Reltio will use the venture funding to accelerate product development and expand sales and marketing initiatives.
Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst, Constellation Research, noted that "Reltio offers organizations a technology platform that comes with industry-specific, data- driven applications. The company also enables partners and organizations to rapidly create their own data-driven applications. Data-driven applications represent a new category of digitally designed applications that help organizations take data, deliver relevant information, identify insights, reveal patterns and drive decisions across the enterprise.
"This approach addresses gaps in a hodgepodge of solutions that often include master data management, business intelligence and analytics, transactional business applications, and Big Data infrastructure and tools."
The singular challenges faced by health care and life sciences companies make Reltio data-driven applications well-suited for key account management, affiliation management, HCP/HCO management, product data intelligence, plan and payer management, key opinion leader and clinical trial investigator management.
Reltio Cloud is available now. For further details on capabilities and pricing, email info@reltio.com.
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