Alation, a stealthy information-management startup, gets $9M

These days, big companies have data stuck in lots of places, making it hard to come up with insights that can bring meaningful results. A startup called Alation wants to make all that corporate data more accessible, and today the startup is announcing a new $9 million funding round.

Alation cofounder and chief executive Satyen Sangani was not quite ready this week to show off the software — the startup is still in stealth mode for the time being. But Sangani, a former Oracle executive, believes Alation’s tools could end up going beyond the reach of information-management software from IBM and SAS, among others.

“Right now, inside the average enterprise, data is really hard to find, really hard to use, and really hard to understand,” Sangani told VentureBeat in an interview.

Which indicates that he sees an opportunity to squeeze Alation into the enterprise data stack. Clearly some investors believe he’s right.

Sangani declined to talk about all the ways in which Alation’s software could be used. But he did discuss the circumstances in which one company has been using it.

“One of our customers has multiple reporting tools, but inside of their reporting tools, they have over 15,000 reports,” he said. “How do you know which is the right report? How do you know when you have 10 things that look like they say the same thing? Which one is actually right? How do you find the right information in the first place?”

The new money will allow Alation to spend more on sales and marketing, which should translate into a larger customer base for the startup.

Alation started in 2012 and is based in Redwood City, California. Around 27 people work for Alation now; the headcount should fall between 40 and 60 by year’s end, Sangani said.

Costanoa Venture Capital and Data Collective led the new round. Andreessen Horowitz, Bloomberg Beta, and General Catalyst Partners also participated.