Open source business intelligence and analytics firm Pentaho has secured $23m in C-round funding as it looks to push the business on and take advantage of Big Data analytics.

The round was led by New Enterprise Associates. Existing investor including Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures and DAG Ventures also contributed.

CEO Quentin Gallivan said the investment will help the company build on the Big Data craze. "Pentaho has a proven big data strategy with over 300% increase in big data sales for the first nine months of 2012 over the same period in 2011," he said.

"This Series C investment allows Pentaho to keep pace with fast-moving technology innovations, recruit the necessary talent to execute on our big data strategy, and to expand our leadership in big data analytics," Gallivan added.

"Pentaho has carved out a massive opportunity as an analytics and intelligence layer for a wave of web-scale, open-source data solutions," said Harry Weller, general partner at NEA. "With a robust platform that complements technology offerings across the big data stack, Pentaho is helping its customers realise the true potential of big data."

Recent updates to the firm’s flagship analytics platform, Pentaho Business Analytics 4.5, introduced data visualisation, including the ability to visualise Big Data. Interactive visual analytics features included lasso filtering, zoom and attribute highlighting on all chart types.

Further Big Data capabilities include distribution across Hadoop clusters and expanded NoSQL database integration including read, write and reporting with Apache Cassandra, DataStax and MongoDB, the company said.

Pentaho competes against other open source BI vendors such as Jaspersoft and Jedox as well as traditional proprietary vendors like Oracle, IBM, SAP and SAS.