Image: Big Data Insight Group

In light of Realtime’s recent $100 million dollar investmentto re-invent the worldwide web, its no secret that Big Data investors have deep pockets and huge ambitions. The possibilities for leveraging massive amounts of data in innovative ways seem as vast as the information companies seek to store and analyze. SpaceCurve, which addresses demand for “immersive location intelligence” with its unprecedented geospatial data solutions, garnered $3.5 million in funding to accelerate product development. ParStream, which provides a real-time, low latency Big Data Analytics platform, recently received over $5 million in investment for its unique approach to storage and analysis issues. The future of Big Data startups seems to get bigger and better with Big Data startup events like SAP’s Big Data Startup Forum, which challenges new companies to provide effective data solutions for the chance of funding and business guidance

SpaceCurve

SpaceCurve provides data solutions for companies in mobile, advertising, financial, intelligence and other sectors that analyze massive amounts of complex location data. According to Derrick Harris of GigaOm, this data includes “geospatial, geotemporal, network or sensor data that’s constantly created by devices from mobile phones to water-safety monitors.” John Slitz, new SpaceCurve CEO suggests the company addresses a major problem for clients, namely that spatial data “accumulates fast and doesn’t necessarily follow any standard structures,” making storage and analysis extremely difficult to maintain.

According to SpaceCurve, their database reveals underlying patterns in multidimensional geodata to offer “users a familiar database experience on data that are not at all ideal for traditional databases.” Harris believes what makes this technology unique is that anyone collecting data from sensors or connected devices that show location data “will be able [to] make use of it in ways and at a scale never before possible — and on scale-out commodity hardware instead of specialized big iron systems.”

SpaceCurve also plans to make the database available as a cloud service. Going forward, SpaceCurve will deliver code in the fall, wrap its beta period in December and make its solutions broadly available near March 2013. SpaceCurve’s funding, is an extension of its Series A round, for an aggregate total of $5.2 million. Investments come from newest funder, Triage Ventures, and existing investors Reed Elsevier Ventures and Divergent Ventures.

ParStream

ParStream, a real-time Big Data analytics database provider, founded in 2008 in Germany, secured $5.6 million in a round of series A financing. According to a recent press release, investments came from Khosla Ventures, Baker Capital, Crunch Fund, Data Collective, Total Capital and undisclosed investors.

ParStream’s appeal lies in its efficient results. The company is noted for its “unique compressed indexing method with massive parallel processing to deliver real-time and low latency results for Big Data analytics. According to ParStream CTO and co-founder, Jörg Bienert, the database can deliver “sub-second response times on billions of data records,” while simultaneously receiving new data. Shirish Sathaye, partner at Khosla Ventures and ParStream board member summarizes the company’s potential: “ParStream is challenging the established database vendors with its unique approach to solving the need for analyzing Big Data fast enough to drive real-time action. It allows companies to solve Big Data problems much faster and at a much lower cost and we see applications for this technology across several industries.”

SAP Big Data Startup Forum

Germany will also be the site of SAP’s new Big Data startup forum in Berlin. Over 35 startups from Germany and Austria will participate in challenges to create new applications on the SAP HANA® platform. According to SAP, “Ideas range from developing new approaches in personalized medicine for cancer patients to creating smartphone-based food management services to making sense of the vast amount of data from Web and social media channels for marketing and other purposes.”

Teams with top ideas qualify for the SAP Startup Focus program, which provides free SAP HANA test and development licenses for up to one year in order to help startups prepare their ideas for the market. Leading companies receive marketing assistance and possible funding opportunities, such as investment from the US$155 million SAP HANA Real-Time Fund. The best ideas will be presented at the SAPPHIRE® NOW conference, held November 13-16, 2012, in Madrid. You can learn more at the SAP Startup Focus program page and SAP Newsroom.

The competition in the Big Data market will continue to drive innovation. Given the vast opportunities to improve on enduring challenges in data analysis and funders eager to support a worthwhile idea, it looks like there are millions more first-place prizes to be won in the field; and even more millions to be invested.