The growth of big data has led many organizations to store petabytes of valuable information in a centralized repository, more out of necessity than by design. But the value of a central data lake is increasingly being questioned, as end-users demand access to key datasets for running distributed applications. That’s why companies such as Unifi Software Inc. are developing tools to directly address the distributed data challenge in the enterprise.

“[Distributed data] plays so much into our value proposition. It’s where things are going right now, and the market is bearing that out,” said Chris Selland (pictured), vice president of strategic growth at Unifi Software.

Selland visited with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at SiliconANGLE’s office in Boston, Massachusetts. They discussed Unifi’s value proposition, the opportunity that attracted Selland to join the company, and how artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming big data.

Closed new round of funding in March

Unifi, a Silicon Valley startup, is building a suite of self-service data discovery tools that employ AI and ML technologies. The company has grown to 65 employees and raised $32 million to date, following a successful Series B round in March, according to Selland. Investors include Scale Venture, Canaan, and Pelion Partners.

While he was unable to divulge any specific revenue numbers, Selland did say that the company had reached “triple digits” in customer growth, with a focus on fields such as healthcare and financial services. Unifi’s users include Boston Biomedical, AT Kearney, MoneyGram and Sabre.

The former Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. executive said that Unifi is getting a positive response from customers by challenging the fundamental belief that data needed to be collected in one place to be analyzed.

“That just doesn’t work because it’s just not feasible,” Selland said. “Working with data is no longer an area just for data scientists.”

Instead, Unifi’s tools enable a diverse set of groups within the enterprise, such as marketing, finance, and supply chain users, to access the data they need on their own terms. “Our value proposition starts with how we catalog the data and show you where it is. It’s really about democratizing the use,” Selland added.

AI and ML tools integrated

Unifi has also integrated AI and ML technology tools into its offerings.

“It’s a combination of AI and ML built into the fabric of what we do. The more data you collect, the more data you use, the smarter the systems get, the more useful the solutions become,” Selland said.

Unifi has formed partnerships with companies such as Cloudera, Hortonworks and Microsoft, is part of Microsoft’s Accelerator program, and is working closely with the Azure team. “We’re very involved in the Microsoft ecosystem,” Selland said, with what he described as a “full-stack solution” sitting on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform, using Azure HDInsight (a fully-managed cloud Apache Hadoop offering), and visualized through Power BI analytics tools.

People care less today about the technology infrastructure and more about what’s being done with it, according to Selland. “One way or another, organizations need to get smarter and much more precise about how they use data, and that’s what we’re really trying to help with,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below:

Photo: SiliconANGLE