Platfora

Platfora, Inc. operated as a big data analytics company, founded in June 2011 by Ben Werther and Sri Satish Ambati. Werther, a Stanford University Computer Science graduate with experience at companies like Microsoft and Greenplum, conceived the idea after realizing the potential to significantly accelerate data analysis by pairing software with the open-source framework Apache Hadoop. The company secured substantial funding from prominent investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Cisco, and In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture fund, raising over $95 million across several rounds.

The firm developed a big data discovery platform designed to enable business users and data analysts to visually interact with petabyte-scale data sets in seconds. The platform was built to work natively on Hadoop and later Apache Spark, providing an end-to-end solution that included raw data preparation, in-memory acceleration through a feature called "Lenses," and rich data visualization tools. This allowed non-technical users to perform self-service data preparation and analysis, exploring vast amounts of raw data—such as transaction logs, customer interactions, and machine data—without needing extensive IT involvement. The software facilitated the creation of interactive graphs and other visualizations that could be easily shared within an organization. Platfora's business model was geared towards enterprise clients, with notable customers such as Citibank, Disney, Sears, and TiVo.

The platform's key value proposition was its ability to dramatically reduce the time to insight from weeks or months to hours, competing with established firms like SAP, IBM, and Oracle by offering a more streamlined approach to big data analytics. It allowed users to connect and analyze multiple data sources, both Workday and non-Workday data, to gain a more complete business picture. In July 2016, Workday, Inc. announced its definitive agreement to acquire Platfora. The acquisition was intended to bolster Workday's own analytics capabilities within its Financial Management and Human Capital Management products, integrating Platfora's technology directly into the Workday platform.

Keywords: big data discovery, data analytics, Hadoop, Apache Spark, business intelligence, data visualization, self-service analytics, data preparation, operational analytics, Workday, petabyte-scale data, customer analytics, security analytics, IoT analytics, in-memory analytics, Andreessen Horowitz, Ben Werther, data analysis, financial analytics, human capital management analytics