• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
TechPointCloud

Cloudability Buys DataHero to Make Cloud Usage Clearer to Customers

Barb Darrow
By
Barb Darrow
Barb Darrow
Down Arrow Button Icon
Barb Darrow
By
Barb Darrow
Barb Darrow
Down Arrow Button Icon
January 6, 2016, 8:47 AM ET
Photograph by Barb Darrow for Fortune
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

This is interesting. Cloudability, a startup that made its name monitoring customer usage and cost of Amazon Web Services, is buying DataHero, a data visualization specialist that aggregates and analyzes information about how customers use Salesforce.com, MailChimp, ZenDesk, Office 365 and other subscription software services.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Most, but not all, of DataHero’s staff will make the move and form the core of a new Cloudability office in San Francisco, where DataHero was based. However, DataHero founder Chris Neumann will not move, nor will the company’s current CFO or vice president of engineering, according to VentureBeat.

To date the two companies have focused on different market segments. Cloudability targeted the use of shared public cloud resources from Amazon (AMZN) and launched an analogous cloud monitoring service for Microsoft(MSFT) Azure last summer.

DataHero, on the other hand, concentrated on the use of popular subscription applications from “Software as a Service” vendors like Salesforce (CRM). While, Amazon cloud services are mostly consumed by technically proficient developers most SaaS products are used by business-oriented, but not usually geeky, consumers. But that divide is starting to come together and companies that use lots of different cloud products need to get a better handle on how well that money is being spent for both types of cloud services.

MORE: On legacy software company’s move into cloud services.

The crux of the issue is that while cloud usage starts out looking inexpensive—a great bargain—things can turn ugly pretty fast. Developers forget to turn off Amazon compute “instances” after the job is run. Companies pay for lots of users of SaaS products, but many of those people may not actually need them. That leads to the same old “shelfware” problem of past computing eras where companies are paying for resources that are not utilized.

In an emailed statement, Cloudability Chief Executive Mat Ellis said:

It’s clear cloud is becoming mainstream. It used to be that our power users were the people who signed the purchase order. We’re starting to see real sophistication among the front line users, which indicates that a much broader understanding of why the cloud is so powerful is developing. DataHero will allow anyone to import the business metrics they use into Cloudability without needing IT to help.

Cloudability has raised just under $16 million since its founding in 2011 and shares one investor, the Foundry Group, with DataHero, according to TechCrunch.

WATCH: How Amazon took over the cloud in this Fortune video:

Cloudability cites Goldman Sachs estimates that spending on cloud infrastructure and services will hit $43 billion by 2020 up from about $26 billion this year. Those projections vary widely, but it is clear that many companies, including some of the biggest Fortune 500 players, are putting more of their IT budget into buying cloud services from third-party vendors rather than building out more of their own internal data centers.

SIGN UP: Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter about the business of technology.

And more of the money that had gone into big-bang enterprise licenses to run software in-house is now flowing into the sort of subscription services pioneered by Salesforce 15 years ago. For the past several years, Oracle (ORCL), Microsoft, IBM (IBM)—virtually all of the legacy software companies—have scrambled to adapt that delivery model, after initially pooh-poohing it.

Cloudability competes with companies like Cloudyn, which just took in $11 million in new funding last month. Newvem, another compeittor, was bought by Datapipe in 2013. DataHero competes with Tableau, DOMO, and JasperSoft as well as tools from bigger, broader companies like Salesforce’s WAVE.

So what will a combined Cloudabilty/DataHero do for customers?

DataHero “makes it much easier for users to easily grab things like conversion count from Google (GOOG) Analytics, trial user signups from HubSpot, revenue numbers from Zuora, etc.,” Ellis said via email.

That’s the sort of data that business users need in their reports so they can assess such minor things as cost and gross profit per customer. “An integration between DataHero and Cloudability will make this muh easier for users, very quickly,” he said.

 

About the Author
Barb Darrow
By Barb Darrow
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

elon
CommentaryChina
China has 400 private space companies. The West is barely paying attention
By Rainer ZitelmannJuly 2, 2026
53 minutes ago
hegseth
Startups & VentureVenture Capital
The defense tech boom has become a bubble—or it will be soon
By Allie GarfinkleJuly 2, 2026
3 hours ago
Emily Blunt is worth $80 million and just pocketed $15 million for her latest film—but she once wanted to be a Spanish translator for the UN
SuccessCareers
Emily Blunt is worth $80 million and just pocketed $15 million for her latest film—but she once wanted to be a Spanish translator for the UN
By Orianna Rosa RoyleJuly 2, 2026
3 hours ago
How foodservice giant Sodexo is embracing AI and robotics to reshape the kitchen
NewslettersCIO Intelligence
How foodservice giant Sodexo is embracing AI and robotics to reshape the kitchen
By John KellJuly 1, 2026
17 hours ago
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
AIAnthropic
Anthropic’s AI models are back online after a two-week government standoff—settling the company and administration into a fragile truce
By Tristan BoveJuly 1, 2026
18 hours ago
Nikesh Arora, chief executive officer at Palo Alto Networks
SuccessJobs
CEO of $248 billion cybersecurity company says workers are about to face a ‘Darwinian moment’ thanks to AI: Evolve or get cut
By Emma BurleighJuly 1, 2026
19 hours ago

Most Popular

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
Big Tech
As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezJuly 1, 2026
1 day ago
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
Success
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
By Sydney LakeJune 25, 2026
7 days ago
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
Newsletters
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
By Diane BradyJuly 1, 2026
1 day ago
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 1, 2026
21 hours ago
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
Success
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
By Preston ForeJune 27, 2026
5 days ago
Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
Success
Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
By Sydney LakeJune 29, 2026
3 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.