Open Source NoSQL Database Firm Couchbase Raises $60M

NoSQL open source database software startup Couchbase has raised $60 million in funding. The company, built around an open source technology, has had a year of stellar growth, with sales increasing 400 percent and size of the workforce doubling. The funding will help propel this growth with continued product investments, expanded regional tech support and scaling its marketing and sales teams.

The Big Data market can be segmented into two halves: operational data management, where Couchbase and NoSQL vendors play, and analytical data processing, which has been led by Hadoop vendors – although Google’s abandonment of MapReduce is sure to shake up the Hadoop world.

Operational data management, where Mountain View, California-based Couchbase plays, is accelerating with increasing enterprise adoption of NoSQL. The startup already has several household names as customers, including  Beats Music, Cisco, Comcast, Disney, eBay/PayPal, Neiman Marcus, Orbitz, Sky, Tencent and Verizon.

The Series E was led by two new investors, WestSummit and Accel Growth Fund, and brings the total amount of Couchbase funding to $115 Million. All existing venture capital investors also participated.

Couchbase is in a great position to disrupt the database market, said Kevin Efrusy, partner at investor Accel Partners. “It is building momentum with Oracle replacements and demonstrating continued competitive success over other NoSQL vendors.”

IDC predicts the market for big data will reach $16.1 billion in 2014, growing six times faster than the overall IT market.

“Global adoption of NoSQL for operational big data initiatives is just beginning," said Bob Wiederhold, CEO of Couchbase. He said his company continued to win over customers from Oracle and MongoDB.

Couchbase’s flagship product is Couchbase server. Architected to consolidate multiple layers of functionality, it is able to support multiple Big Data use cases.  It aims to be simple like a key value database, flexible like a document database and deliver read speeds of an in-memory database.

In order to capitalize on the growth of mobile, the company launched Couchbase Mobile, an end-to-end operational big data management platform that supports both cloud and edge-based (the end devices) computing.

Investor Accel Growth III is a new $1 billion fund that focuses on investing in later-stage companies driving important new trends in technology adoption. The other new investor, WestSummit, has partners located across the U.S. and China and is particularly excited about Couchbase’s Asia Pacific potential.

Raymond Yang, co-founder and managing partner at WestSummit, will join the Couchbase Board of Directors. “China, and broader Asia, represent a huge market, and we believe Couchbase is well positioned to take leading share of this opportunity. As an investor and board member, I’m looking forward to supporting their APAC growth.”