Venture firm Accel makes another huge Big Data bet

Accel Partners Tuesday announced a $100 million fund to back software companies exploiting the technology foundation built by the first wave of Big Data start-ups.

Accel refers to this next round of startups as builders of data driven software used by organizations to make better decisions.

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"We are seeing an accelerated rate of innovation in big data, with the newest generation of entrepreneurs re-imagining ways to extract the most value out of big data and fundamentally change the way we work and process information," said Ping Li, an Accel partner, in a statement. 

New tools from startups could enable workers to make use of structured and unstructured information from a variety of sources without relying on formally trained data scientists, according to Accel.

Accel's Big Data Fund 2 follows a $100 million fund launched in November of 2011 at the Hadoop World Conference.  Advisers to Accel's new fund include Anthony Deighton, CTO of QlikTech, and Shlomo Kramer, CEO of Imperva

Accel investments in the Big Data and data infrastructure fields have included companies such as Cloudera, Couchbase, Nimble Storage and Trifacta.

The venture firm has plenty of company in the Big Data funding chase. For example, Data Collective is a dedicated Big Data and data infrastructure-focused seed and early-stage venture fund.  And ex-Vertica CEO Chris Lynch, now with Atlas Venture, is zeroing in on Big Data investments.

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