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Comcast

Comcast looks to mine information with Zoomdata

    by Bob Fernandez
    Published 

Comcast Ventures, an arm of cable giant Comcast Corp., has dipped its toe in "Big Data" with a financial stake in
Reston, Va.-based Zoomdata.

Zoomdata can tap massive databases in real time and graph the results for easy analysis.

Matt Carbonara, an investment professional with Comcast Ventures, said Zoomdata's analytic tools could be used in a cable comapny looking at its customer interactions, a credit-card company rooting out fraud or a regional health-care organizaton tracking patient care.

Databases have proliferated in recent years with the collapse of computer prices. Carbonara estimates that the amount of data available to businesses grows by 40 to 50 percent a year. But many times the information in those databases is difficult to access for companies looking to quickly mine it. Zoomdata seeks to solve this problem, he said.

"Big data is disrupting consumer markets in every industry, including media and communciations," Carbonara said. "Zoomdata is at the cutting edge of helping organizations make sense" of the information out there, he added.

Comcast Ventures, Accel, Columbus Nova Technology Partners and Razor's Edge participated in the latest $25-million round of financing for Zoomdata, which has now raised a total of $47.2 million since its launch in 2012.