ST Telemedia invests in California big data firm Datameer
Singapore
CONTINUING with its recent spate of strategic investments and acquisitions, ST Telemedia (STT) on Tuesday announced an investment in Datameer, a big data analytics and visualisation company based in San Francisco, California.
STT has become the lead investor in Datameer's US$40 million financing, with venture capital investor Top Tier Capital Partners joining in. STT will have a seat on Datameer's board.
Existing investors - including Redpoint Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Next World Capital, Citi Ventures and Software AG - will also participate in the current round of financing. Proceeds will fund Data- meer's growth initiatives across all business units and global expansion.
Datameer was founded in 2009 with the aim of combining the power of Hadoop (a big data analytics tool) with a spreadsheet interface, enabling business users to easily run analytics against very large data sets, with no programming required. The company has demonstrated strong customer traction including with some of the world's leading financial institutions, telecommunications carriers and global companies, an STT spokeswoman said.
The investment marks STT's first foray into big data and in a key emerging technology vertical. It underscores the company's commitment to continually seek new growth opportunities, expand its capabilities in next- generation platforms, and capture synergies within its global portfolio.
Growth in big data is gaining momentum with the rising number of enterprise and government organisations recognising their data as a critical strategic asset to drive business value and address complex national issues. Big data analytics is increasingly becoming a critical component of business strategy.
Singapore has established itself as a global data management hub with more than 50 per cent of the commercial carrier and carrier-neutral data centre space in South-east Asia. Data analytics has been identified as an important growth sector for Singapore. By the end of 2017, it is expected to contribute S$1 billion in value-add to the economy.
According to the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), the country plans to nurture a pool of 2,500 multi-disciplinary data analy- tics professionals over the next five years. For Singapore, data is fast becoming a new "natural resource" that can be refined and modelled into a form that can be used to drive economic growth. As a country with no natural resources, Singapore recognises the importance of analytics in unlocking the value of data.
The STT spokeswoman said the investment in Datameer will allow the company to participate in the attractive growth potential in big data while enabling Datameer to tap STT's deep market insights, partnerships and existing portfolio businesses to accelerate its expansion in the Asia-Pacific region as well as globally.
