Hamilton eyes global niche in analytics

A Hamilton start-up is hoping to carve a worldwide niche in the business analytics industry by helping organisations make sense of data lying about in hundreds of millions of Excel spreadsheets.

The five-person company, 11Ants, changed its name from Khipu in June and will start marketing its software in the United States next month, after launching it in New Zealand last week.

It was spun out of Waikato University, which retains a 71 per cent stake through its commercialisation arm WaikatoLink. Wellington venture capital company Endeavour Capital bought a 29 per cent stake two years ago.

11Ants business development manager Tom Fuyala says its software was three years in development and is designed to "take the drudge" out of data mining.

It can search for patterns in data and then make predictions using a combination of 11 machine-learning algorithms commonly used by academics and experts in financial institutions.

The company's core intellectual property resides in its "HyperLearn" technology, which manages the application of the algorithms. A professional version of the software is available for download online, costing US$449 for a one-year licence.

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