Kannan Kothandaraman, Nitin Kumar and the Selector Team
Three years ago, we set out to develop an operational analytics platform that would eliminate downtime and empower operations teams with tools to be more efficient and productive in their jobs. We wanted to make their lives easier, taking the complexity out of application and networking issues by providing a solution that combines intelligence and analytics but most importantly gives them actionable outcomes. We like to think about it in terms of all the iterations of search engines before Google came on the scene. The early “search” engines were very literal and required the user to wade through links and know exactly what they were looking for, whereas Google’s superpower is its ability to predict what you’re searching for and deliver more precise results, even leading you to the answers to questions you didn’t know to ask. This is the approach that our platform, Selector Analytics, takes to the AIOps space.
We came to this place having seen first-hand the shortcomings of monitoring solutions during our years working with some of the largest Service Providers, financial institutions, cloud providers, retailers and all manner of enterprises all over the world. It was through the lens of that extensive experience and the lessons learned from it, that we saw a huge opportunity to deliver the best AIOps platform on the market. A platform that other vendors in the space haven’t come close to matching. Like Google did for search, we take a sophisticated, complex environment and deliver simplicity.
Today, we are announcing our $28M Series-A led by Two Bear Capital, SineWave Ventures, and Atlantic Bridge. Comcast Ventures and Azure Capital Partners are also investors in the company. It brings the total funding raised by the company to $33M.
Even as we look to the future with great excitement, today is also a day to reflect on how far we’ve come and how we got here, a process that inevitably leads me to the three pillars of credibility that Nitin and I built Selector on, and what we’ve been working so hard at for the past three years as a team. We always come back to these pillars to validate our market proposition and technology offering, and enable us to hold true to our promises.
- The Team
- The Technology
- The Implementation
The Team
We have assembled a world-class team, from companies such as Juniper, VMWare, Cisco, Nutanix, AWS, and focused it on transforming the AIOps space, and that’s one of the main reasons Two Bear Capital, SineWave Ventures, Atlantic Bridge invested in us. Collectively, we have decades of experience and deep domain expertise in networking, applications, data science, AI and machine learning. Our leadership team has first-hand knowledge about the problems our customers are facing and the shortcomings and failures of the platforms and systems they’ve relied upon before. This has enabled us to build a solution that meets their needs in ways that no other vendor has been able to.
With this Series A funding, we’ll continue to build out our hand-picked team with individuals who bring different but complementary skills and experiences to the table. Together, we’ll push ourselves to innovate, encouraging each other to greater heights, while creating a supportive and collaborative culture.
The Technology
Everybody promises magic with their AI/ML-powered solutions. Claiming to provide a “single pane of glass” that collates information across disparate sources into a single view is a common claim, and yet most simply don’t. It’s no wonder prospective customers are becoming skeptical. But Selector Analytics is not your garden variety AI/ML platform. We really are breaking the mold with our solution.
We identified a problem that needed solving, we found the white space, and we delivered. As a team, we noticed that the monitoring tools out there are beginning to be commoditized. Not only that but monitoring is no longer enough – we need to move to observability. And ultimately, we need to move to action and to take into account all the myriad data sources enterprises rely upon plus multi cloud environments. It’s a complex and sophisticated landscape that we bring simplicity to.
We also break down the silos of data, of work and between departments. Our technology is groundbreaking: by merging networking, AIOps and observability into a single platform. And we’re making our solution broadly applicable to not just the problems the customer is having now, but also those they will have in the future. Our team recognizes the broad applicability but also the ability to scale. This is critical to our current and future success.
The Implementation
At Selector, we are driven relentlessly by our goal of delivering total customer satisfaction. So, it was incredibly important for us to create a Customer Success team right out of the gate. In real terms, this plays out as our customers having unprecedented access to our data scientists and our resources. And because we are “people intensive,” this means customers get the best and the brightest minds along with the technology. In other words, our customers get contextual collaboration and consultative support along with the platform. And what’s more is we have our customers up and running in days.
Nothing makes me prouder of our platform and our team than hearing positive feedback from our customers. Recently, the VP of Operations of a major wireless company told me, “What Selector has done is deliver an Operations Center (NOC) in a box, which has been a target for the last 20 years for operations teams everywhere”. This is the type of feedback we’re receiving from customers and prospects and we know it’s because of the power of our team combined with the best technology.
When we built the platform, instead of trying to be everything to everyone right away, we focused on its architectural underpinnings to ensure that it could be leveraged in a wide range of use cases, and deliver the scalability organizations need to grow and move forward with their multicloud infrastructures. Our flexible approach to implementation enables customers to start small and expand as needed.
While Selector Analytics has been in production deployments at Fortune 500 companies such as Bell Canada, NBC Sports and many more, our $33M in funding will be used to bolster R&D efforts, expand our reach across the world, grow our team and welcome more customers to our growing roster.
The Future
The AIOps market is ripe with opportunity, and expected to grow by over 20% between 2021 and 2027. With our new funding, we are eager to execute on our execution strategy to provide the best AIOps observability solution.
We are excited to see what the future holds. We are confident that our strong foundation, experienced team, value proposition, and ability to grow and scale along with our customers will enable us to not just deliver on promises made, but also realize the true value of usable AIOps accessible across a broad range of use cases. We are exhilarated by the possibilities for Selector, our customers and partners.