BlueData is undergoing two big changes that will augment its infrastructure software platform. The company is announcing a $20 million Series C funding round led by Intel Capital and a collaborative partnership with Intel. Doug Fisher, senior vice president of Intel and general manager of its Software and Services Group, will join BlueData’s board of directors.
BlueData helps enterprises deploy their big data applications and infrastructure. The BlueData EPIC software platform uses virtualization technology to help companies leverage big data using Hadoop-as-a-Service in an on-premises deployment model. With BlueData, organizations can spin up virtual Hadoop or Spark clusters within minutes, providing data scientists with on-demand access to the applications, data and infrastructure.
BlueData’s third round of funding includes additional investment from existing investors Amplify Partners, Atlantic Bridge, and Ignition Partners as well as a new unnamed strategic investor. BlueData will use the investment on its software development and innovation, along with expanding its engineering, sales, business development and marketing teams.
“We need to continue to build our products,” said Kumar Sreekanti, co-founder and CEO of BlueData . “We’ll be adding new innovations so we will continue to add value to the customers.” BlueData will continue to support the latest versions and distributions in the Hadoop and Spark ecosystem, enhancing its partnerships with companies such as Cloudera, Databricks, Hortonworks and MapR, as well as with application vendors such as AtScale, Datameer, Platfora, Splunk, Tableau and Trifacta.
Along with the funding, BlueData announced a partnership with Intel that will blend together BlueData’s infrastructure software for big data with the data center architecture based on Intel Xeon processor technology. Accelerating the adoption of big data solutions by simplifying deployment is the goal of the BlueData-Intel collaboration, according to BlueData. BlueData will develop and optimize its big data infrastructure software for Intel architecture. Intel will focus its engineering and marketing resources on the joint engineering roadmap and joint customer acquisition. Additionally, the companies will execute joint go-to-market strategies that include coordinated product, channel and sales programs.
“There’s a very nice synergy between BlueData and the Intel big data teams as well as the Intel infrastructure teams that have been doing a lot of work around optimizing their hardware platform for big data,” said Jason Schroedl, vice president of marketing at BlueData.
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