Amid the fierce competition in the data visualization market, a group of top investors are betting that Boulder, Colorado-based SlamData Inc. will come out ahead.

Early Mint.com backer Shasta Ventures, True Ventures and three other funds announced today that they have invested $6.7 million in the startup to help fuel its campaign against traditional dashboard tools. SlamData Chief Executive Jeff Carr told VentureBeat that more than 8,000 companies already use its data visualization platform to understand their unstructured information such as images and health reports, though most of those are using the free version of the software.

Unstructured data is a pain point for many of the competing providers out there. The reason has to do with the way that their products are designed.

Tableau Software Inc. and SlamData’s other top rivals entered the market much earlier in a time when most of the information that companies wanted to visualize was formatted like a spreadsheet. As a result, analysts historically had to manually organize their unstructured data before they can start creating a dashboard, which slows down the task a great deal.

In contrast, SlamData focuses on heterogeneous information and as such requires a lot less preparatory work. The startup claims its platform can plug into practically any system where unstructured data is kept, whether it’s a NoSQL database or a Hadoop deployment, and extract the contents with minimal human input. Analysts can then visualize the records using the same familiar SQL syntax that they employ to interact with traditional structured data.

To speed up the process, SlamData provides a graphical workbench that automates many of the repetitive tasks involved in creating a new dashboard. The startup claims that visualizations take as little as a few minutes to create using its platform depending on the source information. Once a graph goes live, end-user queries are redirected to the system where the data resides to ensure they’re executed with as little latency as possible.

SlamData’s  platform lends itself to visualizing healthcare information, transmissions from connected devices and many other types of unstructured data. The startup will hire more developers using the capital from today’s funding to extend its software into even more areas. Carr also plans to bolster his management team and step up customer acquisition efforts. SlamData currently has about 50 paying clients, including the Department of Homeland Security. 

Image: Pixabay