MarkLogic: Poised for Growth after 13 Years
March 27, 2014
I believe that MarkLogic opened for business in 2001. One of the founders was involved with Ultraseek, a search engine that eventually ended up in the hands of HP Autonomy. In case you did not recall Ultraseek, that product dates from the mid 1990s.
Why’s is this relevant to MarkLogic, a company offering an XML database?
I read “MarkLogic Poised for Continued Growth as the Industry Leader in NoSQL Marketplace.” The write up states:
growth in new markets including Japan and Europe, steady customer acquisition, strategic partner relationships and industry recognition, has further propelled the company into the leadership position within the NoSQL database market.
The company points to the release of MarkLogic, Version 7, which works out to one release every two years. The company “introduced new pricing and packaging, a free developer license, and cloud ready hourly pricing for Amazon Web services.” No details on the pricing were in the story. No information about MarkLogic’s revenues were included. After the last shift in senior management, MarkLogic seemed to be nosing toward $60 million in revenues in 2011, based on our estimates. Now three years later, the company is showing renewed press release activity, but I would have preferred some hard numbers. In those three years, MarkLogic has suggested that its XML database can work as an information retrieval system, a platform for conducting intelligence, and providing print publishers with a useful content processing system. In this 36 month period, open source solutions, JSON, and competitors have been moving in similar directions. Choice, at least in data management, abounds.
MarkLogic, since 2001, according to Crunchbase, has ingested $73.6 million in funding with the last cash infusion coming in 2013 from Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital, Northgate Capital, and Gary Bloom, who is, according to Businessweek, the chief executive Officer, President, and Director of MarkLogic.
The news release points out:
MarkLogic received many industry accolades during the last year. The company was favorably positioned in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems,” published in October 2013. In addition, MarkLogic was the only enterprise NoSQL database vendor featured in the report that integrates search and application services. The company was also recognized in the April 2013 “Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Search,”- the only company to have the same product featured on both reports. Other accolades include the 2013 Computerworld Honors Laureate, by IDG’s Computerworld Honors Program. The annual award program honors visionary applications of information technology promoting positive social, economic, and educational change. Furthermore, MarkLogic was selected as one of the 2013 Red Herring 100 Global Winners – recognized as a leading global private company and an innovator in the technology industry.
These types of awards are not identified as “content marketing” or pay-to-play studies. I assume these accolades are objective and based on the cited firms’ deep experience with Extensible Markup Language and its applications. Anything less would be suspect in my way of looking at the world of databases, semantics, search systems, and business intelligence solutions.
With fast moving deals for outfits like Oculus Rift, the surging growth of Elasticsearch among developers, and almost frantic efforts of some MarkLogic competitors to find a way to generate revenue growth and profits—MarkLogic appears in the news release to be showing signs of revivification.
My view is that investors may be looking some return on the money pumped into MarkLogic. Assuming that patience is a virtue, I wonder if this 2001 start up is ready to deliver a big pay day to its stakeholders. WhatsApp, founded in 2009, was a home run for its stakeholders. Cloudera seems to be on a similar trajectory.
MarkLogic is 13 years old and proving to be like a teen in a fancy private school. Money is needed periodically. Do teens repay their parents? My teens did not. Investors may not have the appetite for underwriting without a return that I did as a happy parent.
Stephen E Arnold, March 27, 2014
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2 Responses to “MarkLogic: Poised for Growth after 13 Years”
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MarkLogic has the potential to be the Tesla Motors of the NoSQL world. They have outstanding technology and a sophisticated, dedicated user base. They have solved a lot of the problems with enterprise big data at a fundamental level.
Their biggest problem is that they are “too good to be true”, and the investment is seen as being risky because it’s not like you can go to the Home Depot and pick up a truckload of XQuery coders like you can Java or JQuery coders. Believe me, I’ve tried.
That being said, I think the world might just be ready to dip a big toe into the waters when they feel the exhiliration of instant torque at zero RPM.
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