Ocient raises $42.1M more for its speedy data analytics platform

Ocient Inc., a startup with an analytics platform that can run some queries 100 times faster than competing systems, today announced that it has raised $42.1 million in funding.

The cash infusion marks the second extension of a Series B round the company first closed in 2021. The original $40 million investment was increased to nearly $90 million last March. This latest raise was backed by new investors Allstate Strategic Ventures, Blue Bear Capital, Solidigm, Massive, Zelkova and Northwestern Mutual.

Some analytics initiatives require data scientists to work with historical information such as quarterly earnings results. Other projects put the emphasis on analyzing new records immediately after they’re created. A manufacturer, for example, may wish to quickly process fresh error logs from a production line sensor. 

Historically, companies had to use two separate data management systems for those use cases. Ocient’s platform provides the ability to analyze historical and real-time data in one place. That removes the need to operate multiple analytics environments, which lowers maintenance costs.

Ocient says its platform can store petabytes of data and complete some queries up to 100 times faster than other systems. That speed is the result of several performance optimizations built into the software.

Before a database can run queries on a record, it has to import the record from the system where it was originally created. Ocient says its platform can ingest files at a rate of several terabits per second. Along the way, the software is capable of refining the data by performing tasks such as removing duplicate records.

Another prerequisite to running analyses on newly ingested data is creating an index. An index is a collection of shortcuts that makes it easier to find the specific data points needed for an analytics project. According to Ocient, its platform can generate an index in a matter of seconds.

The software also uses several other methods to optimize query performance. It can generate a secondary index, which provides additional data shortcuts that further boost response times. Additionally, Ocient includes an automation tool that uses statistical methods to find the fastest way of running a query.

The platform’s query syntax provides built-in support for linear algebra calculations. That allows it to run artificial intelligence models, which use linear algebra to process the data they ingest. The feature also enables Ocient to run certain calculations that are frequently used in scientific computing projects.

In addition to boosting query performance, the platform promises to help companies lower their storage costs. Ocient uses several different compression methods to shrink the storage footprint of the data it holds. One of those techniques, delta encoding, allows the platform to find files with identical information and compress the duplicate data into a single copy.

Customers can run Ocient’s platform in a managed environment maintained by the company, third-party public clouds or on-premises. For organizations that opt for the latter two options, the software maker offers a database management service. Ocient’s professionals can help customers with tasks such as downloading updates and optimizing query performance.

The company disclosed on occasion of today’s funding milestone that its revenue doubled in each of the past three years, off an undisclosed base. It plans to invest the new capital in product development.

Image: Unsplash