In the enterprise, there is an explosion of data – think documents, videos, audio files, social media posts and even emails. According to according to a survey by Matillion and IDG, data volumes are growing 63% per month in some organizations – and data is coming from more and more places. The same study found that the average number of data sources per organization is now 400 and that more than 20% of companies surveyed drew on 1,000 or more data sources to power their business intelligence and analytics systems.
Much of the aforementioned data is unstructured, meaning it is not organized in a predefined way (unlike, say, a database of names and addresses). That’s problematic, because storing unstructured data is often on the difficult side — it’s often locked up in different storage systems, edge data centers, and clouds, hindering both visibility and control.
This led entrepreneurs Kumar Goswami, Krishna Subramanian and Michael Peercy to found it Come on, an unstructured data management platform for business customers. Komprise claims it can scan petabytes of file and object data, revealing data assets and a dashboard to search for files by metadata, department, and original owners.
“[Our] customers are enterprises experiencing exponential data growth, often with petabytes of data under management across multiple industries, particularly healthcare and life sciences, public sector, higher education and financial services,” said Goswami, who serves as CEO of Komprises acts, to londonbusinessblog.com in an email interview. “Komprise is focused on building a strong business with a loyal and growing customer base and has managed external capital wisely. This approach will help us weather potential headwinds as we build a self-sustaining business.”
Investors should also believe it’s a solid approach given that this week Komprise managed to close a $37 million round of funding from Canaan Partners, Celesta Capital, Multiplier Capital and Top Tier Ventures. To date, the company has raised $85 million in venture capital, which Goswami says has been used for go-to-market initiatives, expanding Komprise’s channel partnerships and growing the platform with a “heavy emphasis” on cloud data migration, lifecycle management and self-management. service for industry departments and users.
Most of the investment is equity, but there is some debt – Goswami wouldn’t give a ratio or percentage. However, he did reveal that it is not a “down round” in the sense that Komprise’s valuation rose with the close.
Goswami – who met Peercy when he was product VP at Citrix after the company acquired Goswami’s previous startup, Kaviza – explained that Komprise conducts analytics to gain insight into a company’s data usage. Komprise can create a data management plan to move data to the right place at the right time, he assured, by deploying automated workflows to find data in storage environments while tagging and enriching the data and sending it to external tools for analysis.
“Komprise can move data as it ages to cheaper storage, such as object storage in the cloud, and policies can also be set to delete data after a certain period of time. [The platform can move] data without disrupting user access or existing data protection mechanisms, ensuring greater ongoing data storage and hassle-free backup savings,” Goswami said.In addition to cost savings, Komprise helps organizations discover value in their unstructured data, which is too often locked in expensive storage silos.”
What else can companies do with Komprise? Goswami presents it as a compliance solution and as a means of controlling costs. For example, with Komprise, a company can conduct searches to find sensitive customer data residing on “non-compliant” file shares, or create different data retention, storage, deletion, and backup policies based on usage and business target.
To avoid letting potential customers be put off by privacy concerns, Koimprise says it doesn’t store any customer data. It only records the metadata or tags about data, and stores that information in customer-specified and proprietary locations.
“Storage and cloud vendors all have basic data management and migration capabilities, but Komprise is unique in its ability to work across on-premises, cloud and edge environments to transparently deliver, analyze and automate data transmission, as well as ongoing data lifecycle management and smart data workflows,” said Goswami. “Komprise is able to tailor these investments and help customers derive greater value from their existing and future IT infrastructure.”
More than a few organizations seem convinced. Komprise claims to have more than 300 customers in total, with the largest concentrations in industries such as pharmaceuticals, healthcare, manufacturing, media and entertainment, financial services, and the public sector (including the military).
When asked about economic headwinds, Goswami says he doesn’t expect them to have a major impact on businesses. In fact, he attributes the pandemic and related supply chain issues to accelerating — not dampening — Komprise’s 150-employee growth. The company grew 306% from 2018 to 2021, says Goswami, though it’s unclear exactly what “growth” means in this context; Goswami refused to elaborate.
“Since the pandemic, customers have accelerated their transformation to the cloud and are more focused on cost optimization. As Komprise helps customers with both initiatives, our growth has accelerated during this period. Komprise is focused on building a strong business with a loyal and growing customer base and has managed external capital wisely,” said Goswami. “This approach helps us weather potential headwinds as we build a self-sustaining business.”