Socrata Announces Continued Record Customer, Revenue and Employee Growth

USA - English

• USA - English

Seattle, Washington (PRWEB) October 20, 2014 -- Socrata, a Seattle-based cloud software company focused on democratizing access to government data both externally and internally, today announced continued record customer, revenue and employee growth.

• During the third quarter of 2014, Socrata added 36 new customers including governments large and small.

Some of Socrata’s new customers include: State of Iowa, State of Utah, City of Tucson (AZ), City of Little Rock (AR), City of Henderson (NV), multiple cities in Spain, a large country in South America, and the first Federal Government client in Australia.

• The pace of adoption of Socrata solutions was boosted by the introduction of the Socrata Financial Transparency Suite of Apps, which Socrata began offering during the quarter. Though a new offering, it has already become Socrata’s fastest selling product.
• Socrata continues to add new employees to its organization to help support its customer growth. Socrata added key new hires in engineering, operations, product management, customer success and to its finance and administration team. Notably Socrata also bolstered its leadership team with the hiring of machine learning and distributed cloud computing expert, Deep Dhillon, as CTO. With the industry’s largest engineering team focused on developing and operating open data solutions, the company also created a new VP of Engineering role and filled the key position with John Zook, whose experience includes leading software engineering teams at Amazon Web Services and Oracle.
• The key indicators of Socrata’s platform adoption, data consumption and developer engagement also showed significant growth over the last 12 months, compared to the prior period.

The volume of data uploaded to Socrata’s platform increased 116% year-over-year.

Consumption of data on the company's network grew by 95% when measured in page views on the Socrata Open DataTM solution and by 340% when measured in total data served across all distribution channels. This is a reflection of the increased importance of data syndication to the consumer web and broader ecosystem.

Lastly, third-party developer engagement, measured in tokenized API requests, grew over 400% in the same time period.

• Boosted by new customer additions and increased usage of its solutions, Socrata’s Q3 revenue grew by 92% year-over-year, and the financially strong company is on pace to double it annual revenue (2014 vs. 2013).

Case studies highlighting how its customers’ open data initiatives are succeeding as well as highlights of Socrata’s momentum in the market and its plans for future growth will be showcased at the company’s first-ever Customer Summit, which is being held this week in Washington DC, on October 22-23. More than 200 open data thought leaders and industry practitioners will participate in the event, designed to foster a vibrant community of open data innovation and to share best practices – all as members of Socrata’s Open Data NetworkTM.

“When it comes to building and delivering software, Socrata is a new-style 21st century company that focuses on, and participates in, the public sector community,” says Kevin Merritt, Founder and CEO of Socrata. “We’re proud to be a community-driven technology partner to some of the most innovative government, NGO and multi-lateral organizations around the globe. Our impressive results for the quarter and year to date are a reflection of what happens when we listen to our customers and innovate with them to develop 21st century solutions that help address important local and global challenges through open data experiences. Our strong financial results in combination with the sizable venture capital round we raised last summer have dramatically allowed us to accelerate the pace of innovation.”

Providing Financial Transparency Solutions In Easy-to-Use Apps

One of the best examples of Socrata’s growth, momentum and leadership in the rapidly expanding open data market is the significant adoption rates for its new Financial Transparency Suite of Apps, which currently includes Socrata Open Budget™ and Socrata Open Expenditures™. The cohesive and integrated suite will expand by three additional financial transparency apps over the next two quarters.

Designed for quick deployment and citizen empowerment, the Financial Transparency Suite of Apps is a first, because it helps governments of all sizes to publish budget and spending data quickly, economically and in a consumer-friendly way. Rather than wading through 700-page scanned documents of legal and financial information, citizens and staff see budget and spending data in vivid color. The charts, graphs and images are attractive, navigable and easy to understand and consume.

On the market for just longer than one quarter, Socrata’s Financial Transparency Suite of Apps has already been adopted by 41 customers, including: State of California, State of Hawaii, State of Iowa, Alameda County (CA), Prince George’s County (MD), City of Boston, and City of Baton Rouge (LA). Delivered as cost effective, cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, small and mid-sized cities and counties that are relying on Socrata to support their financial transparency initiatives include: City of Cape Girardeau (MO), City of Davenport (IA), City of Lawrence (KS), City of Lindsborg (KS), City of Salem (MO), Deschutes County (OR), and Santa Monica (CA).

A Steady Flow of Innovative Products and Partnerships

Socrata’s strong third quarter follows a robust year in which the company:

• Launched the Open Data Network, which is designed to unleash the full potential of government data and help drive sustained prosperity in connected communities all over the world. Bringing together a vast and connected ecosystem of participants – governments that are open data publishers and consumers; businesses that incorporate and use government data; citizens; and civic developers and entrepreneurs who use open data to build service delivery apps – the Open Data Network will encompass 25-30 industries, each with its own unique and valuable dataset. Ultimately, the Open Data Network’s participant base will increase and include a host of new and different participants – educational institutions and healthcare providers, for example – in addition to governments, companies, entrepreneurs and civic developers.
• Formed a Multi-year Strategic Partnership with the National League of Cities to work closely with cities of all sizes, locally and globally, in an effort to develop solutions that will help address some of the most critical imperatives facing urban entities today including: fragile fiscal health, deteriorating transportation infrastructure and the need for affordable housing.
• Worked With the European Commission (EC) – the executive body of the European Union (EU) that is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the EU – to develop and deploy an open data platform focused on EU Cohesion Funding data. The platform will help the EC increase transparency, improve performance and ensure that EU investments deliver results.
• Introduced Two Other Key Technology Breakthroughs – The Socrata Apps Marketplace™ and Socrata Service Connect™.

The Socrata Apps Marketplace unlocks the full potential of the Open Data Network. It helps government buyers access the latest civic app innovations to increase constituent engagement; helps improve the quality of life for citizens with apps that are easy to find and easy to use; and helps civic app developers access the technical infrastructure and business models they need to successfully monetize their applications.

Socrata Service Connect enables government organizations to make their constituent services data more transparent, accessible and understandable to tax payers and other key stakeholders, including staff, business owners and members of the media. Built on the Socrata platform and delivered as a turnkey cloud service, this application unlocks constituent services data in a visually appealing, mobile-responsive, intuitive and engaging interface. Additionally, it provides a powerful administrative interface that includes analytical tools that help administrators gain insight into the citizen services that people care about the most.

“We’re proud to introduce these latest breakthroughs, because they can open up open data opportunities for virtually every government around the world,” says Socrata’s Merritt. “We believe that open data is helping government become a 21st century innovation accelerator, not just a service dispensary. This is a huge and tremendously significant transformation that will improve the quality of life for legions of people on just about every continent.”

Socrata’s Leadership in the Global Open Data Market

Looking ahead, Socrata plans to add new solutions and new partners to its growing ecosystem. As more customers from around the globe become members of the Socrata community and join the Open Data Network, they will gain significantly more value by adding their data to the network and deliver richer experiences to their constituents.

“The public sector around the world is ripe for disruption,” explains Merritt. “And, as the global market leader in open data, we’ve demonstrated that we can create new products that governments, NGOs and multi-laterals want, need and use. We’ve also shown that we can serve our public sector customers of any size, locally and globally, with our Open Data and Open Performance solutions, as well as with a new set of financial transparency and civic services apps. Finally, we’ve proven that we can accelerate customer acquisition, and are looking forward to announcing new partnerships and new solutions that will further propel Socrata’s growth and momentum in the global, open data market.”

About Socrata

Socrata is a cloud software company focused on democratizing access to public sector data – both externally and internally. Socrata solutions are relied upon and trusted by the most innovative public sector organizations around the world, including the cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Melbourne and Eindhoven; the states of New York, Illinois and Texas; US Health and Human Services; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; the UN and the World Bank. Socrata’s solutions – such as the recently launched Open Data Network™, which unleashes the full potential of government data to help drive connected communities around the world – assist government leaders in improving transparency, modernizing citizen access to information and bringing data into every decision, all with unprecedented speed and cost savings. Delivered as turnkey services, Socrata’s technologies unlock data trapped in enterprise silos, mobilize and transform it into useful information that everyone can easily access, visualize, share and reuse. To learn more about Socrata, visit http://www.socrata.com.
Contact
Bill Glenn
VP, Marketing
Socrata
bill.glenn(at)socrata(dot)com
(206) 465-3228

Steven Gottlieb, GreenC3, LLC, http://Www.socrata.com, +1 (206) 427-9591, [email protected]