Acunu

Founded in 2009 by a team of researchers and engineers from Cambridge and Oxford Universities, including Tim Moreton, Tom Wilkie, and Andy Twigg, Acunu was a data analysis company that specialized in real-time analytics for Big Data applications. The company's genesis can be traced to the founders' academic and engineering backgrounds, with CEO and CTO Tim Moreton holding a PhD in computer science from Cambridge University. His interest in peer-to-peer applications during his university years laid the groundwork for tackling complex data challenges.

Acunu developed a platform offering low-latency, continuous analytics designed for industries where high-velocity data required immediate analysis. Its core offering was centered around the Cassandra NoSQL database, providing a solution for real-time operational intelligence. The Acunu Analytics platform processed events and SQL-like queries, visualizing results on a proprietary dashboard while ensuring data remained compatible with both Cassandra and Hadoop. This technology catered to clients in sectors such as finance and telecommunications, where it was used for tasks like analyzing financial market data to identify trading patterns, perform risk analysis, and parse telemetry data like call detail records for telcos.

The company's business model focused on providing its analytics platform to power dashboards and embedded applications for infrastructure monitoring, web analytics, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Acunu successfully raised a total of $9.32 million over two funding rounds. A Series A round in February 2011 was followed by a Series B round in September 2012, with backing from investors such as Eden Ventures, Oxford Technology, Pentech, and Imperial Innovations.

In a significant milestone, Acunu was acquired by Apple in late 2013. The deal was characterized as an "acqui-hire," with key personnel, including Tim Moreton and other engineers, transitioning to roles within Apple, particularly in the iCloud division. This strategic acquisition was seen as a move by Apple to bolster its data infrastructure and backend analytics systems to support its expanding content network and cloud services.

Keywords: big data analytics, real-time analytics, Cassandra NoSQL, data analysis, Tim Moreton, Apple acquisition, low-latency analytics, operational intelligence, infrastructure monitoring, web analytics, financial data analysis, telecommunications data, data visualization, Hadoop, cloud services backend, Acunu Analytics, university spin-out, data infrastructure, high-velocity data