GoodData Raises $25 Million To Extend Cloud Based Business Intelligence Platform

GoodData has raised $25 million to continue developing its cloud-based business intelligence technology.

The funding brings GoodData’s total funding to $55 million. Founder and CEO Roman Stanek said the investment came from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners and Fidelity Growth Partners. Windcrest Partners is also contributing to the round.

GoodData offers a cloud-based data analytics service that competes with solutions from companies such as IBM, SAP and Oracle. Its business model is pretty clever. Its markets to the vast ecosystem of SaaS providers that integrate the technology into their own platforms. Those providers can then offer their own customers access to dashboards, advanced reporting and other features.

The difference is in the apps that the SaaS providers offer from GoodData. Stanek cites as an example how budgets are shifting to digital marketing. Marketers, though, still do not have enough analytics. GoodData provides insights into that data those marketers have in such great volume from Twitter, social platforms and online campaigns.

Stanek said last year in a TechCrunch post post by Leena Rao that the company had over 2,500 customers including Software AG and Time Warner Cable. In our interview today, Stanek said the company now has more than 6,000 customers.

The bottom line: the old world of IT is going away. IT is fast becoming a service. Their traditional clients, the lines of business, now use SaaS providers to manage what they do. According to IDC, revenue in the SaaS market was about $13 billion in 2011 and is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 21% through 2015.

GoodData owes its business to this market shift.

Mobile is a big theme in all of this. IT managers have been in a state of confusion about the bring your own device movement. But there are increasing signs that they are getting a grip on how to manage the devices people bring in. That behind them, the trend now is to leverage the scaling of mobile devices with apps that give them deeper ties to customers and partners.

That all drives demand for analytics and positions GoodData at the heart of a new movement that at its core is about innovation and getting better results in a faster way.