George Mathew – Alteryx COO – Is In theCUBE

Another week, another analytics startup raising capital to tackle the fast evolving data requirements of the enterprise. Alteryx Inc. revealed on Tuesday that it has nearly quadrupled its outside financing after closing a $60 million funding round meant to help address the rising demand for its software, which allows organizations to piece together information from different sources into an integrated whole.

Traditionally, data blending involved a great deal of manual work that not only took up a sizable portion of the workday for analysts and thereby greatly delayed the time it took to product useful insights but also created ample room for human error. Alteryx promises to eliminate that hassle with its its namesake solution, which provides a visual environment for aggregating and processing highly varied information.

To remove the need for hard-coded connectors that have to be modified with every application change, the tool automatically plug into a wide range of back-end data sources, from Oracle implementions through Hadoop to popular cloud services. Once the relevant information has been made accessible from Alteryx Designer, users can filter out unnecessary input along with any errors that may have found their way into the mix and proceed to the integration phase.

The platform abstracts what has historically been a complex process involving multiple tools into a graphic workflow that makes it possible to define a map of which datasets should flow where and leave the rest to the program. After their information passes the preparation stage, users can start processing it using the dozens of built-in analytics functions, which span a multitude of areas from geogeospatial to predictive analysis.

In case the default selection doesn’t cut it, Alteryx allows analysts to build custom algorithms and share their creations through an online marketplace that also provides access to submissions from other users throughout the customer base, which it says has doubled to over 600 from last year. The company also ramped up partner relations in that period, expanding its ecosystem to 40 countries and recently rolling out enhanced integration with Tableau Software Inc.’s namesake visualization software to help communicate insights produced in Alteryx Designer more effectively.

The firm intends to use the new $60 million from Insight Venture Partners and existing backers SAP Ventures and Toba Capital in order to maintain that momentum amid rising competition from both fellow startups and entranced vendors. Alteryx revealed that it will use the money, which brings its total raise to an impressive $78 million, to scale engineering operations and further expand its partner ecosystem. Insight co-founder and managing partner Jeff Horing is joining the Alteryx board as part of the investment.

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