Jitterbit Secures $20M In Venture Funding, Sets Sights On Data Integration Dominance

Jitterbit, a data integration vendor that bridges chasms between rival software and systems, Tuesday welcomed an infusion of venture capital.

With a $20 million investment from KKR, the Alameda, Calif.-based software company will set its sights on scaling operations to meet an ambitious goal.

"The time is right for us to take this round of money, invest in a big way and emerge as a leader in this space," George Gallegos, Jitterbit's CEO, told CRN.

[Related: Jitterbit Seeks To Bring Harmony To The Cloud]

Jitterbit was founded some 10 years ago, but only started building its customer base in the past five years.

In 2012, it accepted its only previous round of funding from strategic investors Salesforce and Autodesk.

Since then, the company has grown to around 30,000 customers. Among that customer base are 800 enterprise accounts, including companies such as Shell, Time-Warner, Jim Beam and Accenture.

The business of enabling data integration across platforms and clouds is exploding, Gallegos said.

Enterprises are looking for a connective fabric that makes it possible for disparate solutions to communicate with each other, and Jitterbit's Harmony platform breaks down silos with real-time data integration powered by APIs, he said.

Integration-as-a-Service, as the technology is increasingly referred to, represents a $10 billion market with no clear leaders, Gallegos said.

For Jitterbit, the goal is to use the KKR investment to double the business over the next three years, at which point the company might be in a position to go public, Gallegos told CRN.

One initiative that was launched with the intent of helping realize that goal was development of an industry-specific solution for health care -- the vertical that presents the greatest challenges and biggest opportunities for integration across diverse data sources.

Jitterbit's health-care solution is already being used by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, he said.

"There's a big challenge to unlock that health-care information that’s currently sitting in electronic medical records systems," Gallegos told CRN. "We're becoming an expert in how to connect to those systems and deliver solutions."

Jitterbit CTO Ilan Sehayek told CRN that through some 50 health-care customers -- including a number of large medical providers and pharmaceutical companies -- Jitterbit developed a deep understanding of that industry's needs.

Health care is fertile ground for integration vendors, Sehayek said.

Laws and regulations mandate health-care providers keep records proving the quality of care. But many of those systems weren't designed to improve patient care, and now the providers are hoping to gain valuable patient insights by sharing their data.

At the same time, there are "many new applications being introduced into health care. Whenever that happens, there's a lot of opportunity for integration," Sehayek said.

About a year ago, Jitterbit began hiring employees with expertise in creating solutions specific to that industry.

"We decided to get our technology and solutions at a place where we're well-suited for what's going on in health care," Sehayek told CRN. "It’s a fairly open field, but you need expertise to know what data you're looking for."