Alteryx获6千万美元助推数据分析应用建设平台

Alteryx公司提供了一种通过工作流界面获取的各种数据源来创造分析应用的方式，今日该公司宣布获得了一笔6000万美元的B轮融资，这笔资金将极大地推动公司发展。

该轮融资由Insight Venture Partners领投，现有投资者SAP Ventures和Toba Capital跟投。他们在此之前的最近一轮融资是2013年5月的一次1200万美元的融资。加上此次获得的资金，该公司的总融资额为7800万美元，这显示了投资者的信心，他们相信这个市场会越来越大。

显然这种自信是有原因的，Alteryx报告称目前他们拥有600位客户，较去年同期增加200％。

有趣的是，Alteryx总裁兼首席运营官乔治·马修（George Mathew）并不认为该公司在与通常的商业智能企业进行竞争，不管是更现代的平台，如Tableau和QlikView，或是更传统的企业，如SAP Business Objects公司（马修就来自那里）、甲骨文的Hyperion或是IBM Cognos。相反，马修说他的公司可以作为现有工具的上面一层，他说他们是Tableau和QlikView的合作伙伴，所以他不认为他们是竞争对手。

“当你看到这个市场的出现，它不是关于中心IT，而是关于终端用户如何被激活和授权。这是我们的主张，并且我们专注于关键能力和经验。这就是为什么[我们和其他BI厂商之间]能够进行合作。”

这是因为当你手头有一组数据源，Alteryx是用于处理数据的工具。它可以让你通过在不同的数据源和其他对象间进行拖放来创建一个工作流。然后，您可以将此设计打包进应用中，与他人进行分享，或者你可以用它来生成报告、数据透视表或是你需要的任何东西。

那些应用程序是让这家公司独树一帜的真正因素，他们已经打开了一个市场，在gallery.alteryx.com上分享或售卖，它还为技术性要求较低的用户或公司提供帮助计划，这些公司或个人需要特定类型的报告，但又不想进行无谓的重复劳动。

据马修称，这种方法所得一个有趣的结果是，像德勤、波士顿咨询集团(BCG）和毕马威会计师事务所这样的第三方会创建定制的Alteryx应用，这为他们带来了不断增长的客户群。事实上，马修表示，BCG有20％的员工每天都在Alteryx上工作，而这意味着新的业务。

举一个例子，BCG前不久在巴西有一个奔驰的项目。马修说他们在该国并没有业务，而且与奔驰公司也没有业务往来，但BCG为这家汽车制造商建立了Alteryx应用程序，通过像BCG这样OEM厂商，他们实际为Alteryx提供了大举进入这一全新的市场的便利。

Alteryx目前拥有约200名员工，主要集中在北美地区，不过他们打算利用新的资金来扩大自己的内部研究和发展以及国际销售和营销工作。该公司今年早些时候开设了伦敦办事处，利用此轮融资获得的额外资金，他们计划增加更多的销售人员。

其中的一个原因是尽管数据分析以不同的形式已经存在了很长时间，被IT安装和运行多年后，最近转到了云端，但因为直至现在，这种类型的数据分析大多局限于受过专门训练的分析师和数据科学家，因此这个市场的空间还将继续扩大。

马修说，市场上之所以有更多的成长空间，是因为像Alteryx这样的工具提供了一种方法来简化这种类型的数据进行分析，并把它带给更广泛的企业用户，如果是这种情况，这自然要增加市场的容量。

随着时间的推移，很可能我们将会看到整合，就像早期的企业所做的那样，但马修表示，现在新一代的BI企业仍处于发展早期阶段，在我们在上一代BI工具上所看到的洗牌发生之前，应该还需要一段时间。

英语原文：

Alteryx Lands $60M To Boost Data Analytics App-Building Platform

Alteryx, a company that has been providing a way to build analytical apps from a variety data sources via a workflow interface, got a big boost in funding today, announcing a $60M Series B round.

The round was led by Insight Venture Partners with participation from existing investors SAP Ventures and Toba Capital. Their most recent round prior to this was $12M Series in May, 2013. The additional money brings their total funding to date to $78M and suggests that investors have confidence that this market will grow.

And apparently with good reason, Alteryx reports that it currently has 600 customers, a 200 percent year over year increase.

Interestingly enough, Alteryx president and COO George Mathew doesn’t see the company competing with the usual Business Intelligence suspects, whether that’s more modern platforms like Tableau and QlikView or more traditional enterprise players like SAP Business Objects (where Mathew came from), Oracle Hyperion or IBM Cognos. Instead, Mathew says his company can work as a layer on top of existing tools and he says, they are partners with Tableau and QlikView, so he doesn’t see them as competition at all.

“As you are seeing this market emerge, it’s not about central IT, but about how end users are enabled and empowered. We stand for that and are focused on key capabilities and experiences. That’s why the cooperation [between us and other BI vendors] works.

That’s because Alteryx is a tool for working with data once you have a set of data sources. It allows you to create a workflow by dragging in various data sources and other objects. You can then package this design into an application which you can share with others or you can use it to generate reports, pivot tables or whatever you require.

The apps are what really differentiates this company though and they have created a marketplace to share or sell them at gallery.alteryx.com and it provides a head start for less technical users or companies that a need a particular type of report and don’t want to reinvent the wheel.

One interesting outcome of this approach according to Mathew is that third parties like Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group and KPMG have been creating customized Alteryx apps and this has provided them with a growing customer base. In fact, Mathew reports that BCG has 20 percent of its workforce working on Alteryx on a daily basis and this translates into new business.

As an example, BCG just landed them Mercedes in Brazil. He said they have no presence in that country or with the company, but BCG built an Alteryx app for the car maker and this provided Alteryx with inroads into this entirely new market through an OEM like BCG.

Alteryx currently has around 200 employees focused mostly on North America, but intends to use the new funding to expand their internal research and development along with international sales and marketing efforts. The company opened a London office earlier this year, and with the additional money from this funding round they plan to add additional sales staff.

One of the reasons this space will continue to expand, even though it has existed for so long in various guises, both installed and run by IT for many years, then in the cloud more recently, is because up until now this type of data analysis has been mostly limited to specially trained analysts and data scientists.

Mathew says the market has much more room to grow because tools like Alteryx provide a way to simplify and package this type of data analysis and bring it to the more general business user, and that should naturally increase the size of the market as that happens.

Over time, it’s likely we will begin to see consolidation just as we did with the early players, but for now, Mathew says the new round of BI players are still in the early stages and it should take some time before we see that type of shakeout we saw in the earlier generation of BI tools.