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Harish is providing the Amazon Prime fulfillment experience to everyone else through a combination of AI and an asset-light network of warehouses across the United States.

Alex is automating workflows for the world’s largest enterprises by using process mining to build the connective tissue for businesses.

Mayan is delivering Autonomous IT to the largest companies in the world through systems of intelligence.

Carsten built one of the largest commerce platforms in the world, which powers enterprise merchants and retailers across the globe and now serves as the SAP commerce engine.

Soups is stopping financial crime in its tracks by building the first end-to-end platform for fraud, risk, and compliance.

Adam is enabling restaurant owners to take back their customer relationships by digitizing their entire online and offline operations in a single platform.

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Activant is a research-led global investment firm that partners with high-growth companies.

We partner with founders who have won their initial battles and are ready for the next challenge.

We typically invest when two things come together. First, the company has the potential to achieve escape velocity and transform an entire industry. Second, we believe the founders can lead the company through hyper growth, and our support can significantly increase the probability of this success. 

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Jono was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. He studied at the University of Cape Town, where he fell in love with investing. As a student, he lectured and tutored in the accounting department, an experience that cemented the belief that work becomes meaningful when it brings a positive impact on other people’s lives. He has three years of work experience, bringing with him financial expertise, a passion for research and an appreciation for the challenges faced by business operators. Jono works in research at Activant to identify the businesses that will shape the future.

I’ve always been intellectually curious, loved a challenge, and want to see positive change in the world. For me, investing brings all of those together. I’ve found a career where I can always keep growing and learning from others, while backing the founders who are building a better future.

Oceanrock provides professional services to the investment industry in the UK, working with private equity firms, boutique investment banks, advisory firms and startups. 

Deloitte, is a multinational professional services network with offices in over 150 countries and territories around the world.

Percentage of data analytics projects that never reach production.

DevOps revolutionized software development 20 years ago and has grown into a robust ~$20 billion 

 Yet the data industry still lags, mired in issues DevOps solved long ago. As we discussed in our previous DataOps 

, teams and data remain siloed as organizations rely on an average of 89 different software 

 For the largest enterprises, this number climbs to 383, further increasing 

 Bureaucratic hurdles delay data projects by up to 18 months and nearly half of data workflows remain 

 The impact is severe: 87% of data analytics projects never reach production, 44% can’t track how their data flows through their organizations, and 96% of analytics leaders report stifled innovation due to data management 

 The good news? DataOps can learn from DevOps’ success and build upon its proven playbook to solve all these issues for the data industry.

Percentage of analytics leaders that report stifled innovation due to data management challenges.

Although the technology landscape has advanced significantly since DevOps first transformed software development and data infrastructure presents its own unique complexities, there is much that DataOps can leverage to foster collaboration, create feedback loops, do away with complexity, and embrace innovation.

In the early days of software development, developers (Devs) and IT operations (Ops) teams were two ships passing in the night. Developers would craft code, test it in their own environment, and then "toss it over the wall" to IT operations for deployment. This process involved no collaboration and no feedback loop. It was just a handoff, following the sequential legacy 

 approach to development. A substantial amount of time and energy was wasted on manual code testing and integration, as well as on infrastructure provisioning and maintenance. This disjointed process led to frequent errors, frustrating delays, and a fair amount of finger-pointing.

As software became an ever-greater piece of modern enterprises, this model was no longer fit for purpose. Teams needed to change how they worked to meet demand. With DevOps, a transformative approach emerged: it broke down silos and brought teams together. As a result, teams now work in lockstep, with processes constantly becoming faster, smoother, and more reliable. Tasks that used to take days or weeks are now automated, freeing individuals up to focus on innovation rather than manual grunt work. What once seemed impossible is now standard practice.

Percentage of organizations that embraced DevOps by 2019.

But this transformation did not happen overnight. It was an evolution fueled by the adoption of 

 development practices and a cultural shift toward shared responsibility. As a result, the DevOps movement has grown into an undeniable success. By 2019, DevOps had been embraced by over 77% of 

 Large enterprises are realizing significant annual savings of $37 million to $231 million by reducing costs associated with system downtime, error resolution, and slow recovery times after failures, all made possible through DevOps 

DevOps succeeded in addressing the longstanding challenges in software development and operations by adopting four core principles: 1) foster collaboration; 2) implement rapid feedback loops through automation; 3) abstract away complexity; and 4) embrace a culture of innovation. Together, these principles, which are explored in the sections below, form the DevOps playbook.

Agile development methodology emerged to promote responsiveness and feedback throughout development. The goal was simple but powerful: break down slow, cumbersome projects into smaller sprints. Shorter sprints enabled faster feedback loops, in turn breaking down silos and laying the foundation for DevOps by promoting continuous improvement across teams. This need for responsiveness led to more frequent and constructive interactions and created a collaborative environment where everyone could align on shared goals and follow a clear, well-defined path to achieve them.

2. Implement Rapid Feedback Loops Through Automation

Rapid feedback loops were made possible by implementing Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. Continuous Integration (CI) allows Devs to frequently and automatically add code to a shared, version-controlled repository like 

. Every change is tracked and reversible, enabling teams to add new features without the constant fear of breaking existing functionality. Incremental improvements are subject to automated testing through tools like 

 to catch issues before changes are merged, preventing errors from becoming roadblocks.

Continuous Deployment (CD) takes this a step further by automating the release process, pushing tested code directly to production with minimal human intervention and accelerating the development cycle. For the average IT team, deployment frequency can rise from 12 times per year to roughly 

 Elite DevOps teams, like those at Netflix, have mastered automation to the point where they can deploy to production thousands of times a 

Imagine a team building a web application with each developer working on different features simultaneously, one on the homepage and another on the search bar. Without CI, they'd merge their work at the end, risking conflicts and tricky errors. But with CI, changes are integrated and tested frequently, catching issues early on. Add CD to the mix, and the new features automatically go live post-testing.

DevOps teams now follow the seven steps of the CI/CD pipeline, as illustrated below, to create rapid feedback loops between development, testing, and deployment.

: Teams define project goals, requirements, and roadmaps using tools like 

 to align all stakeholders from the start.

: Code is written and modified in integrated development environments (IDEs) like 

. Code changes are then managed using version control systems like 

, which allow further team collaboration.

: Code is compiled and packaged to prepare it for testing. Automation tools like 

 make this possible by turning code into deployable artifacts.

: Automated tests, which include unit, integration, and functional tests, are run before deployment through platforms like 

 to validate the software and any changes made.

 are used to automate the delivery pipeline by releasing and deploying tested code to production with minimal manual intervention, reducing the potential for errors.

: Post-deployment, runtime environments need to be managed for scalability. Tools like 

 are used for container orchestration, and 

 to automate the provisioning of the underlying infrastructure.

: Alerts and dashboards are set up with tools such as 

 to track performance, identify issues, and gather insights for future improvements, continuously keeping tabs on the system’s health.

Potential annual savings for large enterprises that implement DevOps CI/CD.

When implemented effectively, CI/CD delivers impactful outcomes. Google’s research shows that the average large enterprise can save up to $36.5 million annually by reducing unnecessary rework, while mid-sized enterprises can save around $8.6 

 Proactive monitoring alone can drive additional savings, with the average enterprise benefiting from $9.6 million to $13.7 million annually by avoiding 

 The financial impact is clear: these rapid feedback loops created by CI/CD pipelines not only streamline processes, they also deliver measurable value that justifies the investment.

Within the “operate” step of CI/CD, DevOps teams faced another challenge: managing the complex infrastructure needed to support their applications. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) addresses this by automating infrastructure provisioning and management, making it as scalable and flexible as the software itself.

Before IaC, setting up infrastructure manually was like building custom furniture without templates: fine for one piece, but impossible to scale without errors. Teams needed to evolve beyond configuring servers, networks, and storage by hand. IaC enables this by treating infrastructure as software

 Devs can now write scripts to automatically provision servers (setting up all project prerequisites), load balancers (coordinating network and server traffic), and provide resource scaling (dynamically adjusting resource allocation).

In our web application example, when the team deploys a new feature like a search bar through CI/CD, IaC tools automatically update the infrastructure to keep the software and the hardware in sync. IaC tools like 

 prevent configuration drift and ensure consistency across environments by automating setups across development, testing, and production. By abstracting away the complexities, IaC makes advanced infrastructure accessible to developers without requiring deep expertise in hardware management.

Peter Drucker once said, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." This is especially true in the context of DevOps, where a cultural shift was the key driver of its global adoption, transcending management strategies

While tools and processes play a significant role, DevOps would not have succeeded without developers themselves embracing a culture of innovation. They took it upon themselves to find solutions best suited to their needs, proactively driving changes that benefited their workflows and productivity.

DataOps: Taking a Page Out of the DevOps Playbook

Data teams today are contending with challenges strikingly similar to those that Dev and Ops teams faced 20 years ago: siloed resources, slow development cycles, stagnant innovation, and costly, error-prone manual processes. With the pressures of growing data volumes, the complexities of unstructured data, and increasing demands for AI insights, all too familiar cracks are appearing in workflows. The obstacles and the notorious finger-pointing that DevOps once overcame are now hindering data teams.

Data differs from code in several ways. It has inherent variability, is subject to strict regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union and various privacy laws across the United States, and involves a diverse set of stakeholders with different needs. Despite these differences, the core principles of DevOps can still offer valuable guidance. So, why not take a page from the DevOps playbook? Startups in the DataOps landscape are adapting these principles to fit data teams’ unique needs.

In the following sections, we explore four DataOps practices that can help teams unlock their full potential, drawing on proven strategies from DevOps: 1) foster collaboration with data contracts; 2) implement rapid feedback with CI/CD for data; 3) abstract away complexity with data products; and 4) embrace innovation with an asset-oriented data approach.

1. Foster Collaboration with Data Contracts

Think of data contracts as blueprints for data usage within an organization. They are formal agreements between data producers and consumers that define schemas, data types, quality standards, and access protocols. By establishing clear guidelines, data contracts help organizations adapt quickly to changing data needs while ensuring stakeholder alignment – fostering collaboration, accountability, and automation across teams much like Agile development has done for software projects.

As the volume of sensitive data is projected to grow five-fold by 2028, data contracts become crucial for maintaining data integrity and adhering to stringent regulatory 

 are leveraging data contracts to create a centralized platform for data version control and collaboration, effectively making them “GitHub for data”. This approach allows multiple stakeholders to work on data assets concurrently, with clear visibility into changes and history, just as developers have with code on GitHub.

This shared framework of data contracts not only ensures that sensitive information is managed correctly but also enhances transparency and accountability across teams. As a result, data management becomes more collaborative and efficient, enabling organizations to harness their most valuable asset: data.

2. Implement Rapid Feedback with CI/CD for Data

Data pipelines are in serious need of an update through automation. The traditional “dev-stage-prod” process can’t keep up with the speed and complexity of today’s data needs. In this setup, teams develop in a dev environment, test in a staging environment, and deploy to production. But staging is a full replica of production, making tests slow and costly, taking countless hours and thousands of dollars to run. Isolating changes becomes a major hurdle, as multiple contributors test simultaneously, making it difficult to pinpoint the root cause of issues.

To meet the demand for rapid feedback, faster deployment, and automation, DataOps teams should adopt CI/CD practices from DevOps. Here’s how data teams can apply these principles to their pipelines:

Plan projects to align stakeholders and establish roadmaps, just like in DevOps.

 to allow for version control, rather than being kept locally. Storing code locally often results in a siloed workflow that slows development and hinders collaboration.

Replace manual checks with frequent automated unit and integration tests for every project change:

 can be used to handle data validation and quality checks with minimal manual intervention. These tests should run automatically whenever new code is committed, ensuring immediate feedback.

: “Ephemeral environments” or “pipeline sandboxes” can be spun up to run integration testing with tools like 

. This allows integration testing without affecting live data, thereby enhancing efficiency, reducing costs, and simplifying issue isolation compared to the traditional “dev-stage-prod” approach.

: Tested code for data can also be released and deployed to production with tools like 

 are crucial for tracking runtime errors and pipeline failures. Implementing these tools enables faster issue detection and resolution, ensuring the health of data pipelines.

Recognize that data pipelines often involve complex, data-dependent operations requiring precise timing and sequencing. Use orchestrators like 

 to manage task sequencing, and consider tools like 

 that treat data as assets to manage data flow and dependencies. These orchestrators can also integrate with IaC tools such as 

 to provision underlying infrastructure, reducing bottlenecks between data and IT teams.

Reduction in data pipeline development time.

Adopting these practices may require an initial investment of time and resources, but the payoff is significant. Users report an 80% reduction in pipeline development time, translating to a 5x ROI through workflow 

 These improvements reduce costly errors, speed up deployment, and ensure high-quality, reliable data pipelines, which are critical for data-driven decision making.

Obtained through data workflow automation.

3. Abstract Away Complexity with Data Products

Under the DevOps model, developers do not need to be experts in infrastructure provisioning, they leverage IaC to abstract away the complexity. However, most data teams apply a 

 approach to data, which often requires that data analysts are experts in the pipeline engineering that sits below their analytics dashboards. This approach keeps data siloed and limits collaboration across teams — only 20% of data leaders believe their platforms support data sharing across the entire organization, meaning most data remains 

approach, where data is treated as a well-designed product tailored to end users, emphasizing quality, usability, and ease of access. Instead of handling each data request as a separate project per use case (UC), companies make analytics-ready “data products” available through a centralized data hub or marketplace. This internal “store” lets analysts easily browse, select, and access the data they need, offering a seamless experience akin to online shopping and eliminating the need for lengthy preparation processes. Treating data as a product also makes it easier to scale as the core logic for each product resides within a platform and can be reused across teams.

Looking ahead, we believe this transformation will reshape data management, with most enterprises adopting the Data-as-a-Product approach in the next 5-10 years. Companies like 

 are leading the way by designing data products that align perfectly with DataOps principles, automating workflows, speeding up time-to-market, and reducing silos, all while making data more reliable and accessible.

4. Embrace Innovation with an Asset-Oriented Approach

DataOps can achieve greater efficiency by adopting an innovative asset-oriented approach instead of the traditional workflow-oriented methods seen in DevOps. Most modern data stack tools, from ingestion to visualization — such as 

 — are asset-oriented, ensuring seamless compatibility across the stack.

 adopt a workflow-oriented approach around sequential tasks (step A to step B), diminishing transparency and control at each stage. This creates observability gaps and complicates data quality and governance, making it harder to optimize and manage data effectively.

Embracing an asset-oriented orchestration tool like 

 allows teams to define, track, and manage assets with greater granularity, providing a unified view of the data stack. This strategy effectively addresses the complexities of modern data environments by enhancing compatibility across the data stack, thereby empowering DataOps teams to maintain high standards of quality and governance.

In much the same way that DevOps transformed the software landscape, growing into a $20 billion industry, so DataOps has the potential to become a cornerstone of modern data management. The parallels are clear and the opportunity is immense. We're excited by the companies leading this transformation: 

 are pushing the boundaries of data quality; 

 is spearheading the implementation of an asset-oriented approach to data management.

The playbook is ready, and the infrastructure is in place. Now it's time for data teams to take the field and execute.

The information contained herein is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. The opinions, views, forecasts, performance, estimates, etc. expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Certain statements contained herein reflect the subjective views and opinions of Activant. Past performance is not indicative of future results. No representation is made that any investment will or is likely to achieve its objectives. All investments involve risk and may result in loss. This newsletter does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Activant does not provide tax or legal advice and you are encouraged to seek the advice of a tax or legal professional regarding your individual circumstances.

This content may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund or investment, including those managed by Activant. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by Activant. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, Activant has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the current or enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.

Activant does not solicit or make its services available to the public. The content provided herein may include information regarding past and/or present portfolio companies or investments managed by Activant, its affiliates and/or personnel. References to specific companies are for illustrative purposes only and do not necessarily reflect Activant investments. It should not be assumed that investments made in the future will have similar characteristics. Please see “full list of investments” at https://activantcapital.com/companies/ for a full list of investments. Any portfolio companies discussed herein should not be assumed to have been profitable. Certain information herein constitutes “forward-looking statements.” All forward-looking statements represent only the intent and belief of Activant as of the date such statements were made. None of Activant or any of its affiliates (i) assumes any responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any forward-looking statements or (ii) undertakes any obligation to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement contained herein to reflect any change in their expectation with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based. Due to various risks and uncertainties, actual events or results may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated in such forward-looking statements.

The DataOps Playbook

Lessons from the DevOps success story 

In the race to outpace competitors, companies across industries are turning to data to speed up and improve decision making, roll out better products, and – most importantly – leverage modern AI models and tools. 

, for example, generates ~$130 billion in advertising revenue with dynamic, targeted advertising powered by data from ~4bn 

 broke into the saturated food delivery sector thanks to the insights from ~9 billion annual trips, where more accurate delivery estimates keep 

 AI models also power music recommendations on 

, protect against fraud when consumers tap 

 credit cards, and power your first article draft through 

 – all originating from the troves of data used to train those models.

While these may just be anecdotes, the global economy is pouring investment into the infrastructure that underpins data analytics and AI, creating a burgeoning $100 billion 

 This is a mature market that has brought us scaled public companies like 

, leading outsiders to think that data teams operate in a highly sophisticated, flawless manner, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Most investments into data are a failure. In fact, 87% of data analytics projects never make it to production

 Data platforms are chaotic, manually operated, and highly error-prone. In this article, we dive into these issues and introduce a new approach – DataOps ­– which is ready to not just solve those problems, but provide a 10x improvement.

of data science projects never make it to production.

The amount of data that we’re generating is exploding. New data volumes are 

expected to grow by 80% in just the next three-year period 

and will soon be nearly 100x their 2010 level. As we generate and capture more data, the opportunities for data-driven companies like 

 naturally expand, but so does the pressure on data teams and their infrastructure. Data teams can run into processing bottlenecks, scaling limitations, and skyrocketing costs, with these issues made all the worse if their data platform was architected 

 a 100x jump in data volumes. For data-driven business models, this volume growth is the gift that just keeps giving, but for data teams, it’s the hamster wheel that just keeps spinning.

Worldwide Annual Data Generation Forecast, in 

Increasingly, companies expect and need data to be pushed through their systems 

. Executive teams want live dashboards of their key business metrics, and technology companies like 

 need their decisioning systems to be updated for real-time data including traffic, driver capacity, and more. The shift from batch to real-time processing is both a significant trend and a challenge for teams already struggling with batch infrastructure.

Expected Change in Data Budget Over the Next 5 – 10 Y

And it’s not only executives demanding access to more data - 

means that employees at all levels are expected to leverage enterprise data in their day-to-day jobs. But that also means that data infrastructure needs to be more accessible, data more user-friendly and collaboration fostered without requiring years of technical expertise.

, arguably the strongest driver of new data use, is forecast 

to jump from its current 5% to 80% by 2026 

as companies race to unlock the value promised by large language 

 However, 70% of organizations have already found data to be a challenge to capturing value from Generative AI tools and cite it as their most common 

Enterprises are using more data, more timeously, with increasingly sophisticated AI systems. These trends are here to stay and data teams will have to ensure that their infrastructure is up to the challenge. It likely isn’t. In a recent study 

96% of analytics leaders reported being held back by data management challenges

 - dealing with the storage, access, quality, state, and flow of the 

Practically all organizations are struggling to manage their data, as reflected in the following commonly occurring themes in the IT landscape

1. Data and teams are siloed and fragmented:

Organizations use an average of 187 different software systems. For large enterprises, this number can reach 

 The data in these systems is trapped unless teams can build and manage the pipelines that connect all these systems. However, with on-premises, legacy, and closed systems in the mix, building and maintaining these pipelines can be a highly complex and resource-intensive task. Compounding this issue, each system might have its own departmental owner (a 

 challenge), creating a bureaucratic nightmare that could delay executing on data projects by as much as 12 to 18 

2. The “Modern Data Stack” itself is fragmented and complex:

 exemplify the modern data stack (MDS) – a modular network of best-of-breed tools built in the mid to late 2010s to empower data engineers by being easy to set up and use. Unfortunately, these characteristics meant that teams quickly become inundated with numerous, sometimes duplicative MDS tools, aggregating into an infrastructure that is costly and complex to manage. Worse still, MDS tools targeted at business users might have thin APIs, making it tough to integrate them into one single control plane for data platform visibility and automation. 

Hence, the MDS has no single source of truth

3. As a result, almost half of all data workflows are still manual:

The fragmented nature of data necessitates significant intervention by data teams for tasks such as data discovery, lineage tracking, governance, quality checks, and ETL (extract, transform, load) development. These processes are time-consuming and error-prone, introducing data quality and reliability concerns. As we can see below, nearly half of these are still handled manually using pieced-together code to build and maintain pipelines.

Percentage of Processes That are Manual (Moderately and H

4. Data outputs are error-prone and teams lack visibility for root-cause analysis

Consider an AI project that aims to enrich the quarterly financial reporting for a CEO’s board meeting. The project would need to pull data from various sources such as 

. When this is done by a data engineer in an ad-hoc and manual fashion, errors often arise and when the CEO says that one of the figures “looks off,” it can take days or even weeks to trace through the system to test validity and correct any errors. If this sounds like an exception, consider that 33% of business users are not confident in the quality of data provided to them and 44% don’t have visibility into their data 

Moving from the status quo to the infrastructure that our future requires will drive a massive upgrade in both data tooling and practices. We think that DataOps presents that upgrade.

, but also encompasses several key technologies. At its core, DataOps is about making data teams more efficient - breaking down silos between themselves and IT staff and then accelerating data analytics and the AI lifecycle. Applied correctly, these tools improve the quality and reliability of final data outputs.

From a technology perspective, DataOps products augment the data infrastructure to achieve these goals. Using our Activant Value Chain below we define five core capabilities in the context of the data pipeline infrastructure and summarize how we view the DataOps market:

Our View on DataOps

capabilities enable automatic systems searches to discover new or previously overlooked data across all sources. This capability is rarely seen as a stand-alone solution but is rather coupled with data cataloguing capabilities.

serve as a single source of truth for exploring datasets across fragmented infrastructure and are essential for facilitating data lineage. Lineage visualizes and traces data flow, recording usage details throughout. 

 enhances cataloging capabilities by using AI for data tagging and has a built-in AI copilot, focusing on creating and analyzing metadata to categorize datasets and present data in a user-friendly way. Vendors like 

, however, are more focused on lineage - making use of the catalog metadata. Users are able to understand how data is being leveraged and can assess how changes may impact downstream systems, preempting potential disruptions.

And time to 10x your data platform

It’s Time for DataOps

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