Big data startup Cazena was announced last week by a group of veterans from the IBM-acquired Netezza, who pioneered big data appliances.
What was also announced was a Series A funding of $8 million led by Andreessen Horowitz and North Bridge Venture Partners.
Led by founder and CEO Prat Moghe, who was previously the senior vice president at Netezza, Cazena’s vision is to provide enterprises with Big data on demand – ‘to radically simplify and speed up access to big data, allowing much faster business outcomes at a fraction of the cost.’
Big data experts Jit Saxena, former founder and chairman of Netezza, and Jim Baum, former CEO of Netezza, will also serve on Cazena’s board of directors. “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.
“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,” Baum further pointed out.
Peter Levine, partner at one of Cazena’s backer, Andreessen Horowitz, explained while speaking to David Harris, Tech editor at Boston Business Journal, that Cazena’s stellar team – also responsible for Netezza’s success – was one of the reasons for the funding. The other being the growing need for cloud inclusive enterprises, where Levine believes, Cazena holds ‘tremendous growth opportunities.’
Levine also informed that there will be further rounds of funding for Cazena, and ‘other cloud-related businesses in the Andreessen Horowitz portfolio.’
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(Image credit: Moyan Brenn)
