Data transformation startup Coalesce Automation Inc. emerged from stealth mode today, bidding to solve what it says is the chief bottleneck in the data analytics supply chain.

The company has just announced the launch of its Coalesce Data Transformation platform along with a $5.92 million seed funding round led by 11.2 Capital and GreatPoint Ventures, and is now aiming to “revolutionize” the data transformation space. Coalesce says its platform aims to simplify the arduous process of modeling, cleansing, governing and documenting data so enterprises can access and analyze their information more easily.

Coalesce co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Armon Petrossian told SiliconANGLE that data transformations are the main bottleneck in the data analytics supply chain at the vast majority of enterprises, simply because the amount of time it takes to transform data properly is disproportionate to any other layer in the analytics stack.

“Every other process has been impacted by automation,” Petrossian said. “Think Fivetran for data loading, Snowflake for database tuning, or Tableau for easily creating dashboards. Coalesce takes the exact same approach to transformations: making them as efficient and intuitive as possible.”

Coalesce solves the data transformation bottleneck by combining the speed of its intuitive graphical user interface with the flexibility of code, plus a healthy dose of automation, to enable rapid data transformations. Petrossian said its platform is designed to be used by data architects, data engineers and data analysts alike, allowing those users to make changes to their data more rapidly and boost time to value.

It’s built for large scale too, he pointed out, with a unique “column-aware architecture” that makes it possible to wrap data change management within a user-friendly UI, with data lineage and deployment features. “No other cloud tool in the data transformation space leverages column metadata from the ground up in their product architecture,” he said. “Because Coalesce does, it enables never-before-seen efficiency and governance.”

GreatPoint Ventures Managing Partner Ray Lane, who was formerly president and chief operating officer at Oracle Corp., said companies have struggled with data transformation and optimization since the early days of data warehousing.

“With the enormous growth of the cloud that challenge has only increased,” he said. “We see the value of Coalesce’s technology as an inevitable catalyst to support the scalability and governance needed for cloud computing.”

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE he has high hopes for Coalesce’s technology because speed is of the essence for information technology processes and key for enterprises to become more agile.

“Data is notoriously tricky and slow to transform for most use cases, especially next-generation applications,” Mueller said. “It’s good to see an innovative new approach coming to the market from the startup camp. Whether or not it really works is something we’ll know in a few months.”

Coalesce said its data transformation platform is “GA-ready” for select customers on Snowflake Inc.’s data warehouse starting today.

Image: Starline/freepik