Article by Investment U
These three big data companies could go public now that Splunk’s IPO sent shockwaves through Wall Street.
A little over a year ago, my wife and I bought our first house.
While we’re both very happy with our purchase (especially the location and price), the property sat vacant for a year before we closed on it.
As a result, I had my fair share of home projects to get the place back up to snuff.
I’m no “Bob the Builder,” though.
So I often use Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to search for any home issues I’m having.
Nine times out of 10, if there’s a problem, I can find a solution in minutes. And I’ve saved so much money and time searching for tips and tutorials on various projects.
Now why am I telling you all this?
Because last Thursday Splunk Inc. (Nasdaq: SPLK) made its debut on Wall Street.
The stock exploded from $17 to $32 in its first day of trading before closing out the week at $36.
And word is quickly spreading that it’s the “Google of the business world.”
A Game Changer
You see, behind every website, server, network and system is a mountain of data. It’s very expensive and time consuming for companies to try to make sense of it all.
But this is where Splunk comes into play.
In essence, Splunk is a search engine and analytic software program that captures the full scope of a company’s IT data (even in real-time) so it can focus on what’s really important… building its business.
From tracking social media feeds to customer behavior, user transactions and security threats to fraudulent behavior and more, Splunk uses the vast amount of a company’s IT data to enable them to make better-informed decisions about their business.
But don’t take it from me…
Macy’s (NYSE: M) raves, “The money we’ve spent on licensing Splunk, we’ve captured back over and over again. We’ll spend two or three minutes using Splunk, versus five or six hours before.”
Today, over 3,700 customers use Splunk, including half of the Fortune 100 companies. I’d expect to see this number jump even higher now that the company is public.
But perhaps even more important, Splunk is also just the first of many potential big data IPOs to come within the next 12 to 18 months.
Three More Potential Winners
Just take a look at these companies that could go public now that Splunk’s IPO sent shockwaves through Wall Street:
- Cloudera: Based out of Palo Alto, California, Cloudera develops and distributes a popular open-source software framework called Hadoop.
According to Reuters, Hadoop “helps others companies, including Nokia, Qualcomm and Groupon, store and crunch big data.”
But Hadoop is also used by the likes of Google, Yahoo! and IBM. And Splunk appears to even compliment its use. Perhaps this explains why the company is growing as rapidly as it is. It just raised another $40 million in late 2011.
- Tableau: Tableau is on a mission to help anyone – businesses and people alike – see, understand and share data.
Today, more than 7,000 companies, including a number of government agencies, use Tableau software to analyze and visualize their data. Some of these customers include Bank of America, Barclays Capital and the CIA, just to name a few.
But that’s not all.
Roughly 50,000 people also use Tableau to share data in their blogs and websites. And the company was ranked by research firms Gartner and IDC as the world’s fastest-growing business intelligence company in 2011.
As if this news wasn’t promising enough either, Tableau has already spilled the beans it expects to IPO in 2013.
- Sumo Logic: Sumo Logic can be considered as the cloud-computing version of Splunk.
Currently, Splunk works across on-site computer servers rather than cloud-based servers. But Sumo Logic takes the analytics power of Splunk and applies them to the cloud.
By doing this, Sumo Logic eliminates the need for software upgrades and ongoing system maintenance.
And since more and more firms are embracing cloud-based services, Sumo Logic could just be the next generation of data maintenance and analytics.
Big Data: The Next Great Tech Trend
No matter how you slice it, companies specializing in making machine data easy to understand, graph and share are likely going to be one of the hottest tech trends of the next decade and beyond. Just be sure to keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to jump in.
Good Investing,
Mike Kapsch
Article by Investment U
