The Data Day, Today: Apr 25 2012

Splunk soars on IPO. VMware acquires Cetas. Vertica retain autonomy. And more.

An occasional series of data-related news, views and links posts on Too Much Information. You can also follow the series @thedataday.

* For 451 Research clients

# Splunk IPO: $3bn and counting M&A Insight

# VMware snaps up Cetas Software for ‘big data’ analytics Deal Analysis

# HP’s Vertica retains its autonomy, continues integration with Autonomy Impact Report

# SAP makes long-awaited predictive analytics move of its own Impact Report

# Sanbolic pitches data management platform for server, desktop and database consolidation Impact Report

* Splunk IPO kills, lives up to expectations

* VMware acquires Cetas Software for Cloud and Big Data Analytics

* Opera Solutions Acquires Procurement Analytics Tools and Services from BIQ and Lexington Analytics

* Terascala Announces $14M Series B Funding Round Led by Strategic Partner Consortium

* Ravel Acquired by W2O Group To Expand Big Data Client Services And Enrich In-House Analytics and Insights Technology

* Teradata Active Data Warehouses Provide Private Cloud Benefits

* Pentaho Introduces New Interactive Visualization and Expanded Big Data Analytics

* Teradata Unveils New Purpose-Built Appliance for SAS High-Performance Analytics

* SAP Establishes Global Managing Board to Lead Company

* Oracle to Hadoop Under OneAppliance: GridIron Introduces First All-Flash Appliance Line With Unprecedented Performance to Tackle Unified Big Data Processing

* Lucid Imagination Technology Integration with SugarCRM Lets Customers Enjoy Improved Global Search Capabilities with Apache Lucene/Solr

* The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache Cassandra v1.1

* Miso project: how it will help you make your own Guardian-style infographics and data visualisations

And that’s the Data Day, today.

VC funding for Hadoop and NoSQL tops $350m

451 Research has today published a report looking at the funding being invested in Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL database-related vendors. The full report is available to clients, but below is a snapshot of the report, along with a graphic representation of the recent up-tick in funding.

According to our figures, between the beginning of 2008 and the end of 2010 $95.8m had been invested in the various Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL-related vendors. That figure now stands at more than $350.8m, up 266%.

That statistic does not really do justice to the sudden uptick of interest, however. The figures indicate that funding for Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL-related firms has more than doubled since the end of August, at which point the total stood at $157.5m.

A substantial reason for that huge jump is the staggering $84m series A funding round raised by Apache Hadoop-based analytics service provider Opera Solutions.

The original commercial supporter of Apache Hadoop, Cloudera, has also contributed strongly with a recent $40m series D round. In addition, MapR Technologies raised $20m to invest in its Apache Hadoop distribution, while we know that Hortonworks also raised a substantial round (unconfirmed, but reportedly $20m) from Benchmark Capital and former parent Yahoo as it was spun off in June. Index Ventures also recently announced that it has become an investor in Hortonworks.

I am reliably informed that if you factor in Hortonworks’ two undisclosed rounds, the total funding for Hadoop and NoSQL vendors is actually closer to $400m.

The various NoSQL database providers have also played a part in the recent burst of investment, with 10gen raising a $20m series D round and Couchbase raising $15m. DataStax, which has interests in both Apache Cassandra and Apache Hadoop, raised an $11m series B round, while Neo Technology raised a $10.6m series A round. Basho Technologies raised $12.5m in series D funding in three chunks during 2011.

Additionally, there are a variety of associated players, including Hadoop-based analytics providers such as Datameer, Karmasphere and Zettaset, as well as hosted NoSQL firms such as MongoLab, MongoHQ and Cloudant.

One investor company name that crops up more than most in the list above is Accel Partners, which was an original investor in both Cloudera and Couchbase, and backed Opera Solutions via its Accel- KKR joint venture with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

It appears that those investments have merely whetted Accel’s appetite for big data, however, as the firm last week announced a $100m Big Data Fund to invest in new businesses targeting storage, data management and analytics, as well as data-centric applications and tools.

While Accel is the fist VC shop that we are aware of to create a fund specifically for big data investments, we are confident both that it won’t be the last and that other VCs have already informally earmarked funds for data-related investments.

451 clients can get more details on funding and M&A involving more traditional database vendors, as well as our perspective on potential M&A suitors for the Hadoop and NoSQL players.