Israeli startup Equalum, an ETL company, talked about its tech at a recent IT Press Tour, explaining how it captures database and other changes in realtime and pushes them out to data warehouses and lakes, both on-prem and in the cloud, so operational processes can work on the latest data.
Data integrator Equalum has built connectors to 32 data sources, such as Kafka, MySL, Oracle, PostreSQL and SQLServer for data ingestion, and to 27 targets such as AWS, Azure, GCP, Snowflake and Yellowbrick. It uses change data capture, binary log parsing, and also replication technologies to get new data and stream it to target destinations, at scale, after enriching and transforming it.
VP Marketing Eyal Perlson told B&F that Equalum’s technology is: “the only way to get changed data in volume in real time… Customers want to move operational on-prem database data to the public cloud data warehouse in real-time.”
Binary log parsing refers to Equalum’s agent software accessing binary redo logs of change data at Oracle, SQLServer and other databases and so getting access to changed data faster than by using, for example, Oracle’s LogMiner. Oracle’s GoldenGate uses the same data source, log data from Oracle on-prem, and sends it to Oracle’s cloud, with Perlson claiming: “Oracle GoldenGate is incredibly expensive.”
He said: “We took years to work out how to do this binary log parsing better. … It’s customised unique code.“ Not all sources are accessed using binary log parsing as a presentation slide illustrates:
Overall Equlaum claims its edge is that it helps businesses avoid building unique ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) data pipelines for each data source to the destination target they need with dedicated data transformation steps. Customers are finding that they need to extract data from more and more sources and send it, after any transformations, to more targets. Equalum says customers can use its no-code technology to build ETL data pipelines in as little as 15 minutes using drag-and-drop technology with pre-configured source and target connectors.
This eliminates, it says, customized ETL coding and tool sprawl. Equalum sees part of its job as building more extractors and connectors.
Perlson told us businesses are using Equalum’s tech to make real-time recommendations to customers during online purchases or browsing sessions.
He said: “We are going to be added to the Azure and GCP marketplace in next few weeks.” Asked about the AWS marketplace he said there were no plans. We understand that an issue affecting entry in to AWS’ marketplace is that AWS has tools of its own.
Yellowbrick is a strategic Equalum partner but there is no relationship with Databricks.
Asked about live data replicator WANdisco, Perlson claimed Equalum hadn’t encountered it in any sales deals.
Background
Equalum was founded in Tel Aviv in 2015 by Chief Product Officer Erez Alsheich, current board member and original CEO Nir Livneh, and CTO Ofir Manor. All three were former members of the Israeli Defence Forces. Manor left in January 2019 and joined Microsoft as Senior Program Manager. Equalum’s CEO is Guy Eilon and he joined in 2021 when the company rebranded and tuned its focus around capturing real-time data and sending it cloudwards.
There are around 50 employees with half in Tel Aviv and half in the US: it has an office in Boston, and the CEO has an office in London. Equalum has dozens of customers. including Walmart, Siemens, T-Systems and GSK, but is not yet cash flow-positive. Browse its blog to get more background information.
Equalum’s funding history:
- 2015 – Seed Round
- 2017 – Non-equity assistance
- 2017 – A-Round – $5 million
- 2019 – B-round – $18 million
- 2022 – C-round – $14 million
The company has raised a total of $39 million over five funding events from Planven, United Ventures, Innovation Endeavours, Saints Capital, and SpringTide Ventures.
