Cloudera – What Would You Say, You Do Here?

About one year ago, we highlighted 14 big data companies worth $1 billion or more. At the top of that list was Cloudera. In our article last week on data science and predictive analytics startups, we speculated that the data theme was heating up because a data company called Alteryx (NYSE:AYX) had a successful IPO. Now that Cloudera announced their plans for a “big data IPO” over the weekend, we want to take a deeper look and try to figure out what it is they actually do.

This isn’t the first big data IPO. According to the pundits over at CNBC, big data’s “first IPO” was back in 2013 when a company called  Tableau (NYSE:DATA) software filed for an IPO that raised $254 million giving them a market cap of around $4 billion (about the same as Cloudera’s pre-IPO valuation today). Since that IPO, shares of DATA have returned -2% compared to an S&P 500 return of +44% so nothing to write home about there. What does Tableau do? They provide a data analytics platform and corresponding tools that lets you learn from your big data. So what does Cloudera do that’s different from Tableau? Starting with the very first sentence of the S-1 filing, Cloudera starts to emit the type of techno-babble that makes you want to pull a Peter Pan off the nearest high rise:

Cloudera empowers organizations to become data-driven ente