Birst Inc. has taken advantage of the renewed interest around business intelligence in the investment community as of the late to secure another $65 million on its journey to an eventual public offering. But there is still a long and precocious road ahead to the stock exchange.

The freshly funded software-as-a-service provider is competing not only with established vendors such as IBM and SAP AG that already have a foothold in many organizations, but also fellow new-generation players touting the same value proposition of cloud-native analytics. One of those emerging rivals raised a hefty $30 million in a funding round of its own only a few days ago.

Yet Birst nonetheless manages to stand out thanks to a combination of factors including the fact that its managed business intelligence platform has been around for several years longer than most of the alternatives in the same category, and its promise of simplifying the complex process of combining data from multiple sources. Birst’s early start helped win over technology buyers when the old guard’s grip on business intelligence first started to loosen with the rise of modern analytics.

Birst now claims to have hundreds of enterprise clients spanning major industries such as healthcare, telecommunications and the financial services sectors across multiple continents. That success in turn attracted the attention of investors, who have now funneled a total of $129 million into the outfit, considerably more than most of its privately-held competitors  have raised.

The biggest chunk of this week’s round came from Wellington Management Company LLC, a mutual funds stalwart with a reputation for spotting pre-IPO companies on track to successful exits. Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, DAG Ventures and Northgate Capital also contributed to the investment, which will help the startup sustain its two-fronted fight against the competition until reaching profitability.