On October 4, 2012, RainStor announced a $12 million Series C to expand its enterprise database business, while Trifacta came out of stealth with $4.3 million to build visual tools for preparing data. The announcements captured two different parts of the big-data workflow: storing and querying large datasets, and getting those datasets ready for analysis.
What did RainStor announce?
RainStor announced a $12 million Series C co-led by Credit Suisse and Rogers Venture Partners. Existing investors Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, Storm Ventures, and The Dow Chemical Company also participated, according to TechCrunch’s October 4, 2012 report. RainStor said the funding would support growth in engineering, sales, and marketing.
At the time, RainStor was described as a relational database company focused on reducing the storage footprint of large datasets through compression. It had also released a version that ran natively on Apache Hadoop, enabling SQL queries while leaving Hadoop available for other workloads. The product positioning was especially relevant to large-scale data archiving and enterprise database use.
TechCrunch reported RainStor’s claim that its approach could reduce storage needs by as much as 40-fold. That was a vendor claim, not an independently verified benchmark result. In a RainStor announcement reproduced by NewswireToday, CEO John Bantleman described the investment as growth capital and validation from customers in financial services and communications.
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“We are very excited about this new investment which will not only help speed our growth in the Big Data market but is tremendous validation from the financial services and communications companies which we have been serving for a number of years.”
— John Bantleman, RainStor CEO, October 4, 2012
What did Trifacta do?
Trifacta came out of stealth on the same day with $4.3 million from Accel Partners’ Big Data Fund, according to VentureBeat and TechCrunch. Its announced product direction was a visual platform to help people explore, clean, and reshape data before analysis.
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The concept was to let users inspect a dataset or sample through visualizations, get suggested transformations, and preview the effects before applying them. The product could then generate SQL queries or MapReduce code to run on the underlying data platform. Trifacta aimed to serve both less technical business users and data scientists; this describes the launch-era vision, not proof of later performance or adoption.
Trifacta was founded by CEO Joe Hellerstein, Jeffrey Heer, and Sean Kandel. Hellerstein framed the goal around the people doing analytical work:
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How were RainStor and Trifacta different?
The two companies addressed complementary stages in working with large datasets rather than competing for the same job. RainStor concentrated on compact storage and querying; Trifacta focused on preparing data for people and downstream analysis.
| Area | RainStor | Trifacta |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow position | Storage, archiving, and querying large datasets | Exploration, cleaning, and transformation before analysis |
| Intended users | Enterprise database and data-platform users | Business users and data scientists |
| Technology described in 2012 coverage | Compressed relational storage; a Hadoop-native version supported SQL access | Visual exploration and suggested transformations, with generated SQL or MapReduce code |
| October 4, 2012 funding | $12 million Series C, co-led by Credit Suisse and Rogers Venture Partners; existing investors also participated | $4.3 million initial funding from Accel Partners’ Big Data Fund |
What became of the companies?
These are historical announcements, not current product or funding news. Teradata acquired RainStor in 2014, as reported by Teradata. Accel’s portfolio page identifies Trifacta’s initial investment as a 2012 Series A and records the company as acquired by Alteryx. The cited sources do not establish whether either 2012-era product remains available or supported today.
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