TECH GIANT IBM ACQUIRES ‘Databand’ TO BROADEN ITS DATA OBSERVABILITY STACK
In order to compete favorably in the already competitive space, the tech giant IBM has acquired Databand, a startup pioneering an observability platform for data and machine learning pipelines. However, details of the deal remain farfetched, with the Tel Aviv-based Databand believed to have raised $14.5 million prior to the acquisition.
According to the company’s statement, IBM’s general manager for data and AI ‘Daniel Hernandez’ made clear that folding Databand into the tech giant’s broader portfolio would help the company’s customers better identify and fix data concerns in addition to errors, pipeline failures, and poor quality. With plans to expand Databand’s observability capabilities for integrations across open source and commercial tools, while allowing customers to have “full flexibility” in running Databand either as a service or a self-hosted subscription.
In view of this development, Databand employees are expected to join IBM’s data and AI division, with the purchase due to close on July 27.
“Our clients are data-driven enterprises who rely on high-quality, trustworthy data to power their mission-critical processes. When they don’t have access to the data they need in any given moment, their business can grind to a halt”, Hernandez said.
Startup Databand is believed to be complementing IBM’s existing observability tools from Hernandez perspective, notably IBM Observability by Instana APM and IBM Watson Studio. He also suggested that Databand could alert engineers when the data they’re using to power an analytics system is incomplete, prompting Instana to explain where the missing data originated and why the system is failing.
Hernandez also added: “With the addition of Databand, IBM … is continuing to provide our clients and partners with the technology they need to deliver trustworthy data and AI at scale”.
Co-founded in 2018 by ‘Victor Shafran’, ‘Josh Benamram’ and ‘Evgeny Shulman’, Databand actually crunches various pipeline metadata that includes logs, runtime info, and data profiles, and presents it in a single platform alongside data from other sources like Airflow, Spark, and Snowflake. The primary aim is to offer engineers a view of where bottlenecks or anomalies are appearing and the core reasons why.
Before the tech giant IBM acquired Databand, it was noted that the Tel Aviv-based startup had managed to attract reputable customers including Agoda, FanDuel, and Trax Retail. While among the early investors are Blumberg Capital, Accel, Lerer Hippeau, Ubiquity Ventures, Differential Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners.
“You can’t protect what you can’t see, and when the data platform is ineffective, everyone is impacted – including customers. That’s why global brands … already rely on Databand to remove bad data surprises by detecting and resolving them before they create costly business impacts. Joining IBM will help us scale our software and significantly accelerate our ability to meet the evolving needs of enterprise clients”, Benamram stated.
IBM in a press release made clear that Databand is the company’s fifth acquisition in 2022. However, the focus on companies in AI, automation, IT, and Cloud is rather proof of the company’s buying spree that ‘Arvind Krishna’ began when he became IBM CEO two years ago.
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