If you aren't paying attention to a market called big data—and in particular a company called 10gen—then wake up!
10gen just raised a hefty $42 million—$73 million to date. Sources tell us its valuation is over half a billion dollars—in the range of $500 million to $550 million.
The company wouldn't comment publicly on the valuation but does see itself "building a Red Hat-type of company" in the database market. This is upwards of a $1 billion opportunity," says 10gen president Max Schireson. (Schireson hails from MarkLogic and Oracle).
10gen makes something called MongoDB, an open-source NoSQL database. NoSQL, a new approach to databases that's better adapted to the massive amounts of data websites generate, will be a $3.4 billion market by 2018, says Market Research Media. It's growing by 21 percent a year.
While official comparative stats are hard to come by because all the NoSQL players are private, 10gen says it's got about half the NoSQL market wrapped up already. This is based on other indicators, such as how often LinkedIn profiles mention MongoDB.
10gen has over 500 paying customers, including 5,000 customers for its database-monitoring service, it says. It also has partnerships with Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Red Hat, VMware and others.
NoSQL is one of the technologies that is powering the big data phenom. It is also the go-to type of database for Web and cloud applications. It doesn't replace traditional databases like Oracle—it's a whole new way to deal with data. Big data lets applications cheaply and easily scoop up and analyze massive amounts of information from all sorts of sources.
The round was lead by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Flybridge Capital and Union Square Ventures.
Disclosure: 10gen's cofounder, Dwight Merriman, is an investor, board member, and cofounder of Business Insider. Also, 10gen's co-founder and board member Kevin Ryan is also co-founder and chairman of Business Insider.
Disclosure: Kevin Ryan and Dwight Merriman, the founders of 10gen, are investors in Business Insider.
