Alpine Data Labs

About Alpine Data Labs

Alpine Data Labs, founded in 2010 by former Greenplum employees Anderson Wong and Yi-Ling Chen, developed an advanced analytics platform targeting the big data and Hadoop market. The company aimed to simplify data science, enabling business analysts, in addition to data scientists, to create and deploy analytics workflows and predictive models without extensive coding knowledge.

The founders' background at Greenplum, a pioneer in big data warehousing, provided the foundational expertise for Alpine's core technology. They were soon joined by Steven Hillion, who led the Data Science team at Greenplum and became Alpine's Chief Product Officer. Hillion's experience in leading engineering and analytics teams and his Ph.D. in mathematics were instrumental in shaping the company's product strategy. The company went through several leadership changes, with Joe Otto appointed as CEO in April 2013.

Alpine's flagship product, initially called Alpine Miner and later evolving into Alpine Chorus, provided a collaborative, visual, and code-free environment. This platform allowed users to connect to various data sources, including Hadoop and relational databases, and perform end-to-end analytics directly within a web browser. A key feature was its "In-Database" model, which processed data directly where it resided, eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming data movement. The platform supported integrations with open-source technologies like R, Spark, and major Hadoop distributions. Its business model centered on providing this software to enterprise clients in sectors such as financial services and healthcare, with customers including Sony and GE Capital.

The company secured significant funding to fuel its growth, raising a $7.5 million Series A in 2010 and a $16 million Series B in November 2013 from investors like Sierra Ventures, Mission Ventures, and Robert Bosch Venture Capital. This financial backing supported product development and market expansion. A major milestone for Alpine Data Labs was its acquisition by TIBCO Software in November 2017. The acquisition was part of TIBCO's strategy to enhance its connected intelligence platform by adding a collaborative and cloud-native data science solution to its portfolio, aiming to orchestrate analytics across hybrid environments.