The data analytics market is starting to boom. Hadoop distributions from big data companies like Cloudera have matured and are becoming more useful as they allow for better ways to perform real-time data processing by using cheap commodity hardware in clusters to spread data and then retrieve it for analysis. Customers are building data hubs that use Hadoop with data analytics on top to provide a cheaper alternative to data warehouse technologies.

Datameer is a business intelligence company that is benefitting from this trend. Today it announced $19M in funding for its data analytics platform in a round led by Next World Capital (NWC) with participation from Workday, Citi Ventures, and Software AG. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Redpoint Ventures also participated in the investment. The Series D round brings the company’s total investment to $36.6 million.

The Datameer technology works natively with MapReduce, which maps the data to a cluster of nodes then reduces it to ready for data integration, data analytics and data visualization. Hadoop acts as the hub with Datameer providing the platform for the actual business intelligence.

That’s a model companies such as Sears are starting to use to assist their credit card fraud prevention efforts. Other use cases that include predictive maintenance on machinery and defining the best price for advertising, Datameer says.

The use cases show that Hadoop has proved itself. Companies are increasingly willing to pay millions to create their own data hubs, said Ben Fu, a partner at NWC, in a phone interview this week.

“We have seen that Hadoop has hit an inflection point,” Fu said. “The trend will continue for many years to come.”

NWC has built a presence in Europe, establishing a board of advisors to counsel companies about the market, Fu said. The opportunity there is opening fast in part due to the broad use of open-source.

“They embrace it more and even faster than in the United States,” Fu said.

The market for data analytics and business intelligence is starting to boom. Datameer has plenty of competitors such as newcomers like Hadapt and Karmasphere. Tableau Software, Jaspersoft and MicroStrategy are also considered competitors in the space.

(Image via Flickr)