Datameer Update Brings Instant Visualization To Big Data Analytics

Datameer flipping from data to graphical views and back.

Datameer’s latest update has an interesting twist, literally. As you can see by the GIF above, as you work with data in Datameer’s analytics tool, when you click a button, the screen turns revealing a visualization of the data on-screen in real time.

If you see a mistake, explained Datameer CEO Stefan Groschupf, you can turn it again, adjust your data and then view it again. He said creating this functionality was the company’s primary focus for this update.

Groschupf said most data analytics tools save the visualization for last, but they wanted to provide this ability to visualize the data in real time whenever the person using the tool wanted to see it. He explained that real-time visualization is done via smart sampling, which he called the “secret sauce” of the function. What’s more, he said there could be terabytes of data in the background and it could still show it instantly. I have to admit that I was skeptical that the program could process this much data in real time and display a graphical view of it without delay until I saw it demonstrated.

He said one of the main reasons the company added this function was because it recognized that people have different ways of viewing data. Some are right-brained and some are left, meaning that some prefer to see the spreadsheet with the numbers, while others would rather see the pictures representing the numbers. Now Datameer can accommodate both.

Groschupf says his company is trying to disrupt traditional data processing. As he explained, we have been processing data the same way for 40 years. He says his company’s product is built to use Hadoop natively, and as such it’s in a position to disrupt the way we have processed data to date.

He said that it used to take 18 months to build a database with tons of engineering power, and when you were done you had a data model that could be obsolete out of the box and had taken months to build. “You build it today, based on yesterday’s [requirements] and hope that it’s good enough tomorrow,” he said.

He claims Datameer is built for speed, agility and flexibility and as such outperforms traditional data analytics tools.

Somebody out there must agree they are onto something: Datameer has received $36.8M in funding to date over four rounds, including most recently $19 million in Series D funding in December.