The Boston Business Journal is reporting that big data storage firm Basho Technologies raised $5 million in its latest round of financing.  According to the report, this brings Basho’s total to $12.5M raised in 2011, adding to the $7.5M total they raised back in May.

Basho makes highly distributable and scalable non-relational databases, which are needed for handling and managing the incredibly large datasets now available.  These types of technologies are some of the hottest offerings in the market right now, indicated by the ability of these firms to raise significant capital.  Basho, founded in 2008 by a group of software architects, engineers, and executives from Akamai, recently announced the licensing of their NoSQL database technology, Riak, to the National Board of E-Health in Denmark to operate their nationwide medical prescription card program.

AllThingsD is reporting that New York based data science company XGraph is being acquired by Clearspring of McLean, VA, a social-sharing company.  XGraph, which focuses on modeling and monetizing the Web’s social graph, started about 3 years ago and raised about $3.75 million last year; they have 15 employees and would boost Clearspring’s headcount to 85.

In May of this year, Clearspring raised $20 million, saying at the time that it would spend the cash on acquisitions that would leverage data; XGraph seems to be just one of those targeted acquisitions.

Here’s the official press release from Clearspring announcing the acquisition (via AllThingsD):

Clearspring Acquires XGraph to Create Largest Multi-Graph on the Open Web

Company accelerates growth by deepening data team and technology

McLean, VA and New York. NY. — November 1, 2011 –Clearspring, provider of the largest social sharing and analytics platform, AddThis, announced today it has acquired XGraph, Inc., a leading data science company focused on modeling and monetizing the web-wide social graph. Clearspring’s massive reach and proprietary real-time data processing capability, coupled with XGraph’s audience technology, create the largest multi-graph platform on the web — mapping 1.2 billion user’s connections by brand affiliation, intent and social behavior.

The investment in XGraph’s data science capabilities marks another step on Clearspring’s rapid growth trajectory. XGraph’s team has deep data science expertise with applied backgrounds in advertising, sociology, mathematics and computer science. Their unique technology dynamically organizes users by shared connections and interests. XGraph’s team and platform will drive Clearspring’s existing efforts with publishers, advertisers and agencies forward while also setting the stage for new innovation.

“Clearspring is at the epicenter of two major shifts online — the web becoming social and personal, and advertising becoming data-driven and accountable. The common thread in both changes is data. To compete in this new world, companies will not only need the ability to access and process big data, but also have the ability to activate that data to create value for consumers, publishers and advertisers,” said Ramsey McGrory, Clearspring’s new Chief Executive. “The combined company has the people, technology and data to enable our clients to stay at the forefront of these changes. 2012 will be a breakout year for Clearspring.”

For advertisers, agencies and trading desks, Clearspring will immediately be able to provide the largest multi-graph audience targeting capabilities available on the open web. By using this technology to identify a brand’s core audiences and finding millions of other connected and like-minded people online, the company can now drive more efficient spending and increased campaign performance. Clearspring also plans to leverage this new capability to deliver publishers unique audience insights, monetization capabilities and actionable data products in the coming year.

“Most companies only capture one dimension of how we’re all connected, whether it be our friends or people we share with — a single graph approach. XGraph not only models these social connections, but also multiple other types of connections such as brand affiliations, intent and more — a multi-graph approach,” said Key Compton, XGraph’s CEO. “We’re truly excited to leverage our technology to unlock the value of Clearspring’s massive data set and help publishers and advertisers truly harness the power of the web-wide interest graph.”

XGraph is headquartered in New York with an office in Silicon Valley. All XGraph employees based in New York will join Clearspring’s office there. Clearspring plans to keep the office in Silicon Valley. The combined company will have 85 employees nationwide.

A post today on ITBusiness.ca talks about the need for handling big data, and describes some of the efforts by the big name “big data” players, such as SAS, EMC Greenplum, and Accenture.  According to the post, 72 percent of companies polled by the Accenture SAS Analytics Group say they will be spending more on business analytics in 2012.

There’s a big push to make analytics real-time, going from hours of runtime to merely minutes, and the big data technologies that are being created support this push.  The next step will be the intelligent analysis of all this data, not merely crude analysis done really fast.  As the questions we try to answer become harder, we’ll need a real engineering discipline in developing the right analytics, not merely making the current analytics faster…

It seems that data science is permeating every industry these days, and new industry reports by Forrester Research describe how data science will affect the insurance industry.

Ellen Carney, senior analyst at Forrester, indicates that insurance companies need to build a solid technology foundation to compete in the rapidly moving industry.  Here’s a bit from Insurance Networking News on the report:

So what are architects building toward? Carney foresees big data playing a big part in the future of insurance. She tells Insurance Networking News that carriers know what they’re supposed to be doing with big data but few currently have the data science resources/roles to do anything with it. “I know a lot of the big carriers are trying to build out the big data science skills and I even have talked with a smaller regional carrier in the SE that’s building a data science team,” she says.