BI Firm Gets $38 Billion Cash Injection

Birst, a business intelligence company, just nabbed $38 Million from Sequoia Capital and other investment firms.

The eight year-old company applies cloud techniques to the world of BI. “With the rise of powerful cloud-based technologies, we recognized we could build a robust, multi-tenant BI platform that would unify the traditionally siloed BI technologies, automate critical data management tasks, and greatly reduce complexity—speeding deployments and reducing overall costs,” the company said. “We wanted to deliver real BI—more than a simple charting engine for one or two data sources and one that did not assume that IT had already built a data infrastructure ready for analysis. It would address a business’ entire analytics needs across all data sources, transforming raw data to analysis-ready information. It would empower business users to make meaningful business decisions without the constant involvement of IT.”

Birst believes its cloud approach makes BI far cheaper than on-premises equivalents.

The new-found cash will help the company expand into Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Birst’s clients are a who’s who of top companies, including American Express, Cisco, CSC, Samsung, and Sunny Delight.

“The demand for BI continues to grow and the shift to the Cloud has become unstoppable,” said Brad Peters, CEO and co-founder of Birst. “This investment furthers our ability to strengthen our solution and will allow us to offer it around the world.”

Birst is also adding solution provider partners, including Acumen, Audaxium, and CorSource. Meanwhile the company also has partnerships with Amazon and NetSuite.

Gartner Kudos

In the Gartner 2013 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms, Birst made the grade as a challenger.

Gartner believes that, while BI has been around for a while, many who could use it don’t yet have it. And cloud delivery could shrink that gap. “Although this is a mature market and has been a top CIO priority for years, there is still a lot of unmet demand,” Gartner said. “Descriptive analytics have largely been completed for most large companies in traditional subject areas, such as finance and sales, but there is still a lot of growth expected for diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive deployments. Moreover, many midsize enterprises have yet to even start their BI and analytic initiatives. Gartner's view is that the market for BI and analytics platforms will remain one of the fastest growing software markets.”