Big Data Startup Cazena Lands $8 Million Series A

Founded by former Netezza execs, Cazena intends to “radically simplify and speed up access to big data.”

Startup: Cazena

What they do: This big data startup is still in stealth-mode and is being tight-lipped about their big data plans.

Headquarters: Waltham, MA

CEO: Prat Moghe, who previously served as SVP of strategy, products, and marketing at Netezza, which was acquired by IBM in 2010 for $1.7 billion.

Founded: 2014 

Funding: In October, Cazena reeled in an $8 million Series A round of funding from Silicon Valley heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz and Waltham’s North Bridge Venture Partners.

Problem they tackle: While Cazena is holding its cards close to its vest for now, what we can say is that the startup is focusing on a pain point we hear about a lot: speed. For lack of a better term, let’s call it the “time-to-insight bottleneck.”

With many big data solutions, businesses must spend months setting up the infrastructure, followed by spending millions of Opex dollars in management, maintenance, and labor.

This creates a disconnect between the business and the big data solution intended to serve it.

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What I like about them: First off, Cazena has assembled an impressive team. Besides Moghe, other members of the founding team include Jit Saxena, who founded Netezza in 2000 and served as chairman, and Jim Baum, formerly Netezza’s CEO.

Board members include Peter Levine from Andreessen Horowitz, Ed Anderson from North Bridge Venture Partners, and Steve Papa, who founded Endeca and served as CEO through its $1.1 billion acquisition by Oracle.

“In the past few years, enterprises have been pushed to adapt to the widening gap between the time-intensive big data analysis process and the breakneck speed of business. To shrink this gap, we think it’s time to approach the problem anew,” said Saxena. Added Baum, “Enterprises need data at their fingertips to stay competitive, which is not an easy task given issues around infrastructure, complexity of an emerging data stack and an insatiable appetite for analytics. Just as we did in the past, we see an opportunity to disrupt the space again with Cazena.”

Competitive Landscape: It’s too soon to say for sure, but my guess is that they’ll go up against either the machine-learning big data startups, such as H20, or the fast data crowd, which includes the likes of Parstream and VoltDB.

To learn about other Big Data startups Cazena will be pitted against, be sure to check out the Big Data 50, featuring the top 50 Big Data startups of 2014!