Alpine Data
What they do: Alpine Data helps companies solve business problems through analytics and machine learning. According to the startup, “Unlike other platforms that focus primarily on algorithms, Alpine combines machine learning with operationalization, collaboration, and governance.”
Problem they solve: Data analytics tools increasingly drive business decisions. Well, at least in theory. The reality is that most businesses struggle to incorporate data analytics into their decision-making processes. When data drives decisions, it’s usually in a haphazard fashion, if at all.
According to Alpine Data, the typical enterprise believes that “90% of the value of a big data solution is in modeling, including searching for the perfect algorithm.”
Alpine Data argues that the reverse is true and claims it can prove it.
#Big50-2017 #startup Alpine Data helps companies solve business problems through analytics and machine learning Click To TweetThis misconception, though, has a cost. As a result, Alpine believes that many enterprises – and most especially many business decision makers – have developed an indifference to Big Data and machine learning projects. This indifference is sparked by the many business people think that machine learning is too new, too niche, or simply too complex to provide useful information about business problems.
How they solve it: For enterprises working to solve business problems with data, Alpine’s platform manages a repeatable process that connects machine learning to business behavior. Unlike other platforms that focus primarily on algorithms, Alpine “combines machine learning with operationalization, collaboration, and governance.”
According to a company spokesperson, Alpine Data “makes it far easier to operationalize machine learning across an entire company, so business people, partners and even customers can make difficult decisions that are backed by predictive analytics.”
In the past year, Alpine Data has added new enterprise analytics features, including enterprise data governance, single-sign-on support, Spark Autotuning, support PySpark, and “additional best-practice ETL and machine learning algorithms.”
Alpine Data says that this has helped companies in financial services, advertising, automotive, and other industries dramatically change how a business function can perform. For example, a health insurer has been able to automate 90% of millions of claims, giving doctors and nurses hours of their time back to focus on patients. The insurer was never able to accomplish this with its existing Big Data solutions.”
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
CEO: Dan Udoutch. Prior to joining Alpine, Dan served as the CEO of Code Green Networks, a data-loss-prevention software provider.
Founded: 2011
Funding: $23.5 million raised in two rounds (the most recent round was a $16.5 M Series B, which closed in November 2013) from six investors: EMC Greenplum, Sierra Ventures, Mission Ventures, Sumitomo Corp. Equity Asia, UMC Capital, and Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC).
Competitors include: RapidMiner, KNIME, Alteryx, and SAS.
Customers include: Morgan Stanley, Bosch, VMware, eviCore Healthcare, and Havas Media.
Why they’re in the Big 50-2017: Alpine Data is a two-time winner! The company has solid VC backing, an impressive roster of on-the-record customers, and experienced, proven leadership. We also like Alpine Data’s concept of connecting machine learning to business behaviors, something that could make predictive analytics easier to manage for many businesses.
