MarkLogic Raises Over $100m For Enterprise NoSQL Database Platform

Under the guidance of financial advisor Allen & Company, enterprise NoSQL database platform provider MarkLogic closed an oversubscribed $102 million round of funding to help it capture the operational database market.

The funds will be used to accelerate global market growth, expand its partner ecosystem, and continue to develop its database platform. The company’s initial target for the round was $70 million. Total financing is now around $175 million.

MarkLogic offers a schema-agnostic Enterprise NoSQL database coupled with powerful search and flexible application services. The company believes a generational shift is occurring in the database industry driven by big data and a changing IT landscape.

Traditional database management systems were not built with today’s dynamic data in mind, or to integrate and access heterogeneous data that is the norm among global organizations, according to MarkLogic.

There are several open source NoSQL technologies that have answered the call, however. MarkLogic believes these open source options lack essential enterprise features like data reliability, transactional consistency, security and availability.

MarkLogic aims for the sweet spot between both groups. It sees the largest growth in the operational database market where traditional relational database vendors compete, with half of MarkLogic’s business last year derived from completing projects that started on Oracle.

Research firm Gartner, which pegs the database management system market at $36 billion, placed MarkLogic in the Leaders Magic Quadrant for operational database management systems.

MarkLogic touts 550 global enterprise and government customers. Six of the top 10 global banks use MarkLogic for transactional operations.

Some big enterprise customers include Aetna, BBC, Broadridge Financial, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Dow Jones, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Hannover Re, McGraw-Hill Financial, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), NBC Entertainment, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the U.S. Navy.

“Only MarkLogic can integrate, manage and operationalize both structured and unstructured data, solving a critical data challenge that relational technology was not designed to handle and delivering faster time to results for our customers,“ said Gary Bloom, president and CEO of MarkLogic. “This funding further cements our path of growth as we prepare for the next chapter in the company’s history.”

Wellington Management Company led funding, which also included participation from new investor Arrowpoint Partners, and existing Investors Northgate Capital, Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital, and Bloom.

MarkLogic recently selected Vantage Data Centers for high density data center space in Santa Clara, California.

There have been several recent, sizable funding rounds in the enterprise NoSQL database space this year. NoSQL database management system provider MongoDB recently raised $80 million. Couchbase recently raised $60 million and noted solid momentum and partnerships. Another NoSQL database startup worth mentioning is Basho, which announced a $25 million funding round.