Alluxio accelerates data orchestration, raises $50M
Connecting disparate sources of data for analytics and machine learning gets faster in the vendor's latest platform update, released alongside a Series C funding round.
Data orchestration vendor Alluxio said on Tuesday it raised $50 million in Series C funding and also released a new platform update that accelerates data loading.
Alluxio, based in San Mateo, Calif., has an open source version and an enterprise edition of its namesake data orchestration platform that enables users to connect disparate data sources together on premises and across multi-cloud deployments.
The new Alluxio 2.7 platform update integrates enhanced data management capabilities that accelerate data loading.
Among the data loading enhancements is support for the Nvidia Data Loading Library that is used to help provision data for machine learning applications. Alluxio has also optimized its integration with the Presto query engine to improve query performance.
Mike Leone, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said he's encouraged by the direction Alluxio is going with its data orchestration layer as the distributed format of data continues to expand and organizations require improved data accessibility.
"Organizations need help in unifying data, ensuring timely and high-performant access to that data, and doing so in a trusted way," Leone said. "All of these areas are key innovation areas covered in Alluxio's latest release."
Alluxio 2.7 helps to accelerate data orchestration
Alluxio helps provide data for analytics as well as machine learning applications. In recent years, the vendor has expanded in the financial services and telecommunications industry verticals.
Organizations need help in unifying data, ensuring timely and high-performant access to that data, and doing so in a trusted way. All of these areas are key innovation areas covered in Alluxio's latest release.
Mike LeoneAnalyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
A common usage pattern for Alluxio is to be deployed with the PrestoDB query engine for data analytics. In the update, the company added a capability it calls Insights Driven Dynamic Cache Sizing to accelerate Presto queries. Haoyuan Li, founder and CEO, explained that the dynamic cache sizing enables a cluster to adjust performance characteristics for Presto queries against data.
Alluxio also loads data for machine learning models. Li said that Alluxio 2.7 enables faster data loading, with support for the Nvidia Data Loading Library as well as parallel processing capabilities in Alluxio that accelerate data access.
Alluxio looks to expand data orchestration capabilities with funding
Li said that the new funding will be used to expand the vendor's operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as in the Asia-Pacific region. Alluxio also plans to use the funding for research and development for new technologies.
The new funding is also a precursor to an eventual initial public offering.
"The business has been going really well and it has continued to grow this year," Li said. "Eventually we will go IPO, but today the private capital market is really strong, and we get emails every day from investors that want to talk to us."
Editor's note:Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) is a division of TechTarget.
