Database Mapper Gets $3.5M; Sypherlink sees opportunity in homeland security, M&A.

Ken Schachter — Redherring.com

August 1, 2007 

Sypherlink, whose software uses artificial intelligence and probability-based algorithms to "map" databases, has closed a $3.5 million second round, the company announced Wednesday.

The round was led by Stuart Mill Venture Partners, a new $20 million fund based in Falls Church, Virginia. Battelle Ventures, Reservoir Venture Partners, and Innovation Valley Partners participated in the funding.

Merging information from disparate databases can be a thorny problem, whether for a corporation trying to connect to the data of a recent merger partner or for government agencies trying to share information in the hunt for terrorists. Among the companies working to automate the problem is Santa Clara, California-based Exeros, which is funded by Bay Partners and Globespan Capital Partners.

In 2006, Sypherlink’s Harvester software was chosen by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to integrate law enforcement data across that state.

Ralph Taylor-Smith, a general partner at Battelle Ventures, said the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks gave government greater impetus to aggregate databases, whether from tax, immigration, motor vehicle or law enforcement agencies.

"On the government side, there’s huge interest in this," Mr. Taylor-Smith said.

In private enterprise, mergers of companies such as JP Morgan Chase–the product of mergers among JP Morgan, Bank One, Chase, Chemical Manufacturers Hanover, and others–can create a hodgepodge of databases where one end of the enterprise can’t talk to the other, he said.

"They all have different data on different legacy platforms," he added.

Chief Executive James Paat said that in efforts to integrate databases, discovery and mapping can contribute as much as half of the project’s cost. Whereas one person can map database fields with information such as "first name," "last name," and "phone number" at a rate of about five relationships per hour, according to Dublin, Ohio-based Sypherlink, the Harvester software can map as many as 150.

"We can improve the quality of the mappings because we’re relying on a lot more than human intuition," Mr. Paat said, noting the software scores field relationships based on a variety of attributes such as field name, length, and recognition of patterns.

Not-for-profit researcher Battelle Memorial Institute has invested $220 million as the sole limited partner in Princeton, New Jersey-based Battelle Ventures.