In recent years, there's been an explosion of tools that allow businesses to connect, transform, analyze and serve data from all kinds of sources. Combined with the increasing pressure on businesses to digital transform their operations, this can lead to a patchwork of solutions that aren't easy to maintain or scale. Research from Forrester estimates that 73% of company data is unused and never analyzed, while another study found that 69% of business executives had failed to create "data-driven" organizations.

A partial solution could lie in software designed for data management. Plenty exist, but the latest to attract funding is Ataccama, which today announced that it raised $150 million from Bain Capital Tech Opportunities -- representing a minority investment in the company. A source familiar with the matter tells TechCrunch that the round values Ataccama at $550 million.

Founded in 2007, Ataccama develops data governance, data catalog, data quality and data management capabilities for enterprises.

"Ataccama’s growth potential can be quickly accelerated by scaling up the go-to-market functions (brand, marketing, sales, customer success, etc.) -- that’s the first area where part of the funds will be directed," CEO Michal Klaus told TechCrunch in an email interview. "A second big opportunity is continuing product innovation, focused on bridging the gap between data democratization and the need for centralized data governance and data quality management. The third area … is tighter integrations with major data processing platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks and others."

Ataccama is a spin-off from the data integration systems integrator Adastra. According to Klaus, the founders -- David Holes, Jan Mrazek, Jan Cervinka, Petr Jech and himself -- were seeing data-quality issues in their data integration projects that lead to delays or failures to deliver desired business outcomes for customers. After creating a proof-of-concept product within Adastra, the team decided the opportunity was significant enough to start a dedicated, product-focused company: Ataccama.