Not Everyone is Shrinking: Business Analytics Technology Fuels Expansion at ParAccel

At a time when many tech companies are reducing their payrolls, San Diego’s ParAccel just announced it’s moving into a new headquarters to accommodate its rapid growth. The venture-backed company, which develops business analytics technologies that accelerate database queries, says its workforce has doubled to 60 people over the past year.

“It’s great to be well-funded and in a hot market space,” says Kim Stanick, ParAccel’s vice president of marketing. The company also has operations in Cupertino, CA.

Barry Zane, who is now chief technology officer, founded ParAccel in 2005. Zane, who was also a member of the founding technical team at Netezza, led development of the ParAccel analytic database, which made its official debut in October 2007. Venture funding came from Mohr Davidow Ventures, Bay Partners, Tao Venture Partners, and Walden International.

ParAccel’s focus on business analytics has certainly been hot, especially in San Diego, which has a growing cluster of software analytics. Xconomy even prepared this useful map of the industry here.

Stanick described ParAccel’s analytic database as a general-purpose product used by a variety of customers, such as Merkle, one of the nation’s largest database marketing agencies. It is available as enterprise software, or as a virtual or packaged appliance that runs on standard computer servers.
After installing a ParAccel database last fall, Stanick says Merkle could generate marketing lists that were more accurate and comprehensive than its previous system, with a 200 percent improvement in processing time.

ParAccel’s growth has been strong enough that it usually has a few standing openings to fill. As Stanick put it, “We’re always looking for good engineers.”

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.