(Junar) May 29, 2012 – Chile-based Junar, a leader in open data platforms, announced that it has raised $1.2 million in initial funding. The round was led by Aurus, Austral Capital and top angel investors from Latin America and the US.

To view this press release in Spanish please click here.

Full press release:
JUNAR RAISES $1.2 MILLION AND LAUNCHES THE EASIEST-TO-USE OPEN DATA PLATFORM TO POWER THE DATA ECONOMY

Palo Alto, California – May 29, 2012 – Junar, the Open Data platform leader for the Data Economy, today unveiled the Junar Open Data Platform, a next generation data management system. Its cloud-based platform enables businesses, governments, and other organizations to take the complexity and guesswork out of having to develop their own proprietary open data software and makes it easy to unlock the hidden value of Big Data. The company also announced over 200 organizations participated in its early access program and it has raised initial funding of $1.2 million.
Junar, the Open Data platform leader for the Data Economy, today unveiled the Junar Open Data Platform, a next generation data management system. Its cloud-based platform enables businesses, governments, and other organizations to take the complexity and guesswork out of having to develop their own proprietary open data software and makes it easy to unlock the hidden value of Big Data. The company also announced over 200 organizations participated in its early access program and it has raised initial funding of $1.2 million.

Delivered as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, the data management system enables organizations to easily organize and present data that they want to share. The Junar Open Data Platform is the one service that organizations need to collect, enhance, publish, socialize, and report on their Open Data.

The platform provides a simple workflow that allows users to streamline entire Open Data projects. From extracting datasets to building graphical views to managing data publishing, Junar ensures that data assets are always fresh, relevant, and social. And while some datasets are best shared, Junar makes it easy to control which datasets are made available to the public and which datasets are assigned only for internal users. The Junar Open Data Platform only takes a few minutes to deploy, requires no complex software or costly servers, and empowers organizations to custom brand and integrate their data into their own Web sites or have it hosted.

“Open Data is fast becoming the next defining theme for business and government because information drives innovation and collaboration,” said Diego May, CEO and co-founder of Junar. “And Junar is already the engine for hundreds of organizations who are opening data and for millions of end users who use that information today. As we rapidly move to a society dominated by information and services, Junar is busy powering that transformation and the Data Economy.”

“We wanted to generate and open data and easily integrate it into our site for public sharing and consumption,” said Momi Peralta Ramos, Multimedia Development Manager at La Nación, the second largest newspaper in Argentina. “We looked at our in-house capabilities and determined that we did not want to burden IT or pay for the infrastructure to get going. With Junar it was a no-brainer, and we were up and running in days instead of months. Over nine million monthly users from Lanacion.com have already benefited from our data and we are just getting started.”

Junar also announced that it has raised $1.2 million in initial funding with Aurus, Austral Capital and top angel investors in Latin America and the US investing. The Junar Open Data Platform is available immediately and to activate a free trial account and be up and running in minutes, go to http://www.junar.com

About Junar
Junar powers the Data Economy by delivering the easiest-to-use, cloud-based Open Data platform. For innovative organizations, Junar is the fastest way to publish data. The Junar platform enables businesses, governments, and organizations to free their data to drive new opportunities, collaboration, and transparency. Some of the world’s leading companies trust Junar with their most valuable assets: their data and the end users who are viewing and using it. Learn more and sign up for a free trial at http://www.junar.com and follow us on Twitter @junar.