By Roman Stanek, GoodData, CEO & Founder

Headquartered in San Francisco, GoodData is a provider of cloud-based platform which enables its clients to monetize big data. The company founded in 2007 has raised a total funding of $53.5 million from Tim O'Reilly, Esther Dyson, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, Windcrest Partners, Tenaya Capital and Next World Capital.

As American chemist and multiple Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling famously quipped, "the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of them." Nowhere is this more true than in tech startups today. It is clear that the converging dynamics of cloud computing is creating tectonic shifts in the IT industry.

These days, businesses can tap into an enormous range of cloud services. They can subscribe to high-performance infrastructure services like Amazon Web Services, rent platforms as a service (comprising hardware, operating systems, storage and network capacity) from Salesforce.com, store information in services like Box or automate billings with companies like Zuora. These are just examples.

Companies can also pick and choose from a long list of cloud-based apps to handle business tasks, from customer relationship management and marketing to human resources and financial management.

Cloud making data democratic