A year after closing its last funding round, MapR Technologies Inc. has secured another cash infusion to establish a stronger position in the global analytics market. The company, which sells a commercial version of the popular Hadoop data crunching framework, today announced the completion of a $56 million investment. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round with participation from several other returning backers. The funding follows a quarter in which MapR claims to have doubled new subscription billings year-over-year. This growth puts the company on track to close 2017 with total sales up 70 percent on an annualized basis, according to a press release. #MapR generates most of its revenue from its #ConvergedDataPlatform, which augments the core components of #Hadoop with other open-source tools and proprietary enhancements. MapR recently bolstered its portfolio with a homegrown data store designed to ease large analytics projects. Dubbed #MapRXD, the system enables companies to aggregate records from disparate systems into a unified environment so that they can be processed centrally. MapR mainly sells its software to large organizations. Notable clients include American Express Co., Cisco Systems Inc. and Audi AG. The company’s software also powers Aadhaar, the database that India has built to store the biometric identification information of its more than 1 billion residents. The new funding will enable MapR to further expand its global presence. Chief Executive Officer Matt Mills told Forbes that the company’s expansion plans places a particular focus on Australia, Japan and South Korea. Mills also shared some backroom information about the investment. He said the funding came at a higher valuation than the company’s previous raise last year, which was in turn a down round according to Forbes. It’s a sign that MapR’s investors are optimistic even as competing Hadoop distributors expand their own turf. Hortonworks Inc. last month reported a 42 percent revenue increase for the second quarter, while Cloudera Inc. recorded a 41 percent sale jump during the same period. However, both companies are trading well below their initial public offering prices because of their large losses. MapR isn’t profitable yet either, according to CEO Mills, but he said it’s hoping to become cash-neutral by the end of 2018. The company will likely wait until then before going public given its competitors’ somewhat lackluster stock market performance. Mills was quoted as saying “we don’t have a timetable, we want to do it when things are right” regarding a potential MapR IPO.
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