Company Closeup: Alteryx – From Data To Decision Discovery

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To mobilise the power of data, you can either hire an army of data scientists or turn to Alteryx to use data to power organisations through faster information delivery and analysis. Put simply, any data worker can use the software for advanced analytics.

Businesses need to analyse a growing amount of data, as data-driven solutions are crucial for quick, reliable answers to challenges, including forecasting in an unpredictable economy. Alteryx, as integrated analytics, data science, and process automation provider, unifies analytics, data science, and automation within one platform to help organisations harness the power of complex data and solve problems quickly and effectively. 

Using an efficient land and expand model, the company has rapidly built a customer base of over 600 organisations across a broad range of industries and over 20 countries. Customers include Verizon, Boston Consulting Group, Ingersoll Rand, and Sudhoff Properties. The company has established significant partnerships with related software and services firms, including Qlik Technologies, DataSift, and Slalom Consulting, to complement existing partnerships with Tableau and Cloudera. The company has broadened its international channel partner program in 40 countries.

In June, Alteryx announced a new multi-year technology partnership with McLaren Racing to help the McLaren Formula 1 team accelerate the insights needed to drive breakthrough outcomes and fuel performance through intelligent analytics automation.

Leadership

Dean Stoecker, Olivia Duane Adams, and Ned Harding founded Alteryx in 1997, and through their leadership, the company has revolutionised businesses via data science and analytics. The company provides a deep level of insight faster and more efficiently than ever before to business analysts, IT leaders, and data scientists.

Alteryx is led by Mark Anderson, CEO of the company, a seasoned executive with a proven track record guiding enterprise technology organisations as they grow and scale; Olivia Duane Adams, Chief Advocacy Officer, who focuses on strengthening upskilling efforts for customers to enable a culture of analytics, scaling the presence of Alteryx in academia and furthering diversity and inclusion in the technology space; Matthew Stauble, Chief Customer Officer, who has a track record of leading customer organisations in high-growth companies and his relentless focus on value maximisation for Alteryx users is driving success for the company’s growing customer base.

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Milestones

Headquartered in Irvine, California, Alteryx has development centres in Broomfield, Colorado. The company’s products are used in data science and analytics.

In 1997: Alteryx’s predecessor company, SRC LLC, was founded by Dean Stocecker, Oliva Duane Adams, and Ned Harding. Soon after SRC was founded, it developed the first online data engine for demographic mapping and reporting. 

In 1998: The SRC company released Allocate — a database engine with geographic information about the US Census data that allows users to manipulate, analyse and map data. Solocast was developed in the same year,  a software that allows customers to do customer segmentation analysis.

In 2000: An SRC LLC contract with the US Census Bureau resulted in a modified version of its Allocate software being included on CD-ROMs of Census Data sold by the Bureau.

In 2006: The software product Alteryx was released that allows users to build analytic processes and applications on non-spatial and spatial data.

In 2010: SRC LLC changed its name to Alteryx.

Between 2011 to 2014: Alteryx raised $12 million from SAP Ventures and Toba Capital, $6 million in venture funding from Palo Alto investment arm of SAP AG, SAP Ventures, announced a 30 per cent increase in its workforce following the raising of $60 million in Round B funding from Insight Venture  Partners and Sapphire Ventures (formerly SAP Ventures)

In 2015: Alteryx was funded with $85 million by ICONIQ Capital, Insight Venture Partners, and Meritech Capital Partners.

In 2016: Alteryx ranked #24 overall among the Forbes Cloud 100.

In 2017: A public company listing on the NYSE was held by Alteryx. Also, in the same year, the company was exposed to a data breach.

In 2018: Alteryx was named a leader in The 2018 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms.

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Products

  • APA Platform: In digital transformation, the Analytic Process Automation (APA) Platform enables end-to-end automation of analytics, machine learning, and data science processes. It allows you to automate analytics, embeds intelligent decision making, and empower your employees to meet business objectives faster and more efficiently.
  • Connect: It transforms data and analytics discovery, governance, and collaboration for organisations. Through a powerful data catalogue and advanced analytics, everyone can easily find, manage, understand, and collaborate across departments and the organisation.
  • Designer: It speeds up the entire analytic process with drag-and-drop capabilities. The solution allows you to easily prepare and blend data, as well as analyse it.
  • Promote: It allows you to deploy predictive models more quickly by eliminating the need to recode models. By eliminating error-prone, laborious, multi-step processes, organisations can save considerable time and resources. Promote and simplify ML operations.
  • Server: It deploys, automates and shares analytic outcomes. With Alteryx Server, you can scale, share and govern analytic workflow processes, models, and data. You can build analytic workflows and publish them to Alteryx Server for automated reporting. Organisations can scale analytics across departments and the entire company thanks to built-in data governance, centralised security, and high availability.

Acquisitions

In January 2017, Alteryx acquired Prague-based software company, Semanta. Alteryx Connect is an outgrowth of the Semanta acquisition.

In June 2017, Alteryx acquired data science startup Yhat to enhance its capabilities for managing and deploying advanced analytic models, ultimately resulting in Alteryx Promote. Alteryx paid $10.8 million in cash and equity. 

In February 2018, Alteryx acquired Alteryx ANZ, a distributor of altered software based in Sydney, Australia.

In April 2019, Alteryx acquired ClearStory Data for $19.6 million in cash.

In October 2019, Alteryx acquired Feature Labs, a machine learning startup founded by two  MIT researchers for $25.2 million in cash with an additional $12.5 million in equity incentive awards. Feature Labs is known for developing Feature tools, an open-source library for automated feature engineering with over 350,000 downloads at the time of acquisition. The acquisition added an engineering hub for Alteryx in Boston, Massachusetts. 

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Awards and recognition

Alteryx was recognised by research firm Gartner as a leader in the 2018 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms. In addition, Alteryx was named the Gold winner in The Best Business Intelligence and Analytics Software of 2017.

Alteryx has also been named one of Deloitte‘s Technology Fast 500, a 2019 APPEALIE SaaS Award Winner, and a Top 20 AI All-Stars in Technology by KeyBanc Capital Markets.