Simplifying cloud migration through automation is the need of the hour. How is Niraj, CTO & Co-founder, Datametica catering to this? Read below
1. Niraj, please give us a brief overview of your professional journey so far.
I’ve been in the data and technology space for over a decade and a half. I have witnessed the evolution of the data industry and how it has solved various business problems over the years. In my professional journey, I have seen multiple transitions in analytical platforms such as data warehouses, data lakes, and now the cloud. An important lesson that I have learned over the years is that business requirements will continue to grow and technology will always evolve to solve all the business requirements.
2. Tell us about Datametica and the distinct product suite and solutions that it provides. What makes the company stand out from the competition?
Datametica is a global leader in data warehouse modernization. We are Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Snowflake, and Databricks partners, and help businesses in migrating their legacy data warehouses to the cloud platforms. We have automated cloud migration product suites that help you in migrating your data warehouses or data lakes from the planning stage to post migration data validation. Here is a glimpse of our unique product suite:
- Eagle – an automated assessment & data migration planning technology. It performs in-depth assessments, and gives you a detailed report with a concrete migration plan. It also showcases estimated time and cost that this cloud migration process will require.
- Raven – automated Code (SQL, Script) and ETL conversion technology. Raven automatically translates code workloads (SQL, Scripts) from the on-premises system to the cloud-native technologies. It quickly optimizes codes to reduce execution time and cost and converts codes of varying lengths and complexity in a matter of minutes.Additionally, it decouples, converts, and recouples ETL codes to ensure their compatibility with cloud platforms.
- Pelican – an automated data validation technology. Pelican ensures data quality and reliability between source and target platform by cell level validation with zero data movement and no coding requirement.
3. What was the inspiration behind founding Datametica?
One of the biggest inspirations behind commencing Datametica was that we were witnessing businesses looking for cost-effective options for data warehouse / data lake modernization and simplified migration options. We were among the first businesses that started migrating Data warehouses to Hadoop initially in order to enable businesses to leverage various analytical capabilities. And later, as we saw that the cloud platforms offered enhanced analytics capabilities as well as seamless integration with futuristic AI technology and also solved one of the major concerns of scalability and cost effectiveness, we started migrating legacy data warehouses and lakes to the cloud. To make the cloud migration process painless, we developed our unique automated product suite.
4. What are the vision, mission, and values of the company?
Datametica’s vision is to be a trusted partner of choice for accelerated cloud-based data and analytics modernization. We want to innovate our automated technology in order to establish and maintain a best-in-class position.
Our mission is to simplify the process of cloud migration with the help of automation, initiating a faster and more cost-effective method with our unique toolset and solutions.
We have defined our company values in a manner that enables our products, our employees, and our customers to fly. Our company values are:
- W – Welcome Challenges
- I – Invest in Relationships
- N – Nimble to Nurture, just like birds
- G – Growth with Conviction
- S – Spirit of Adventure
5. As a seasoned leader in the industry, what would you say are your major takeaways?
With my experience in the data and cloud industry, one of my major takeaways is that the importance of data has grown exponentially over the years and is still growing by multiple folds.
We are in the transition phase right now, where data is becoming more and more important to leverage analytical capabilities, encouraging businesses to ask more difficult questions that technology has to evolve to keep answering.
6. With the continuous advancements in technology, what trends do you think will dominate the industry in the years to come?
We know technology is evolving each day, one of the recent trends is “simplicity and standardization”. It is in terms of standard language to deal with data and analytics. SQL is being more popular than ever. ETL and AI both are being simplified with SQL. From data platform perspective, consolidation and unification of data platforms is one of pattern which will dominate the market. This also includes the new models like data Fabric and Data Mesh. The leading trend will be, business will own the data platform than IT owning it. AI will continue to grow and will become leading market trend.
7. Tell us about some of your prominent clients and how did your solutions help them seamlessly integrate your technology into their systems?
We have various Fortune 500 brands as our customers, and many of the top industry players from the United States, Canada, and Europe have used our product suite to modernize their data warehouses to the cloud. We used our automated bird suite to streamline our customers cloud migration process, resulting in a 60% to 70% reduction in time and cost. We successfully migrated their petabytes of complex datasets, millions of tables, and convoluted ETLs to cloud platforms.
8. How do you mitigate risks associated with storing data on the cloud?
I don’t see any risk in storing data on the cloud platforms as the cloud services are being provided by all of the major tech companies, and they have adhered to all security and compliance regulations. The risk we are looking at is the same as it was for data centers; there is no new risk that has evolved. So, as an extra precaution, you can practice all the security exercises and measures that you were doing in the case of data centers, like regular security assessments and audits, Compliance and regulations, etc.
9. How do you envision scaling the growth of Datametica in 2023 and beyond?
I believe that with the automated product suite that we have created, we have addressed all of the concerns about business scalability related to cloud adoption. We are continuously updating our products, making them future-proof, and this has helped us be well positioned in the market. Looking ahead five years, the data engineering market is expected to be worth $20 billion, and our positioning has allowed us to gain a bigger pie of this market.
10. How would you describe your leadership style?
I consider my leadership style to be very agile yet well structured. As technology evolves, it is important to know what businesses are asking for. Understanding the business problem and aligning it with the technology to solve it allows you to be as agile as possible and address the nature of the problem. I feel a leader should be spirited enough to learn new technologies in order to solve problems faster, and if something isn’t working, rather than being stuck with it, they must move on in search of new possibilities.
11. What hobbies do you actively take interest in? How do you strike a balance between your personal and professional life?
I believe that happiness is the key that balances personal and professional life. My hobbies are aligned with my professional career. Working out, meditating, reading various technology papers, and learning about new technologies is what gives me satisfaction and happiness, which has a positive impact on my personal as well as professional life.
Niraj Kumar
Co-Founder & CTO Datametica
Niraj Kumar is a Co-Founder and CTO at Datametica Solutions, a member of the Forbes Technology Council, and an experienced IT professional with over 15 years of industry experience. He is passionate about solving complex business challenges with a data-driven approach and has established robust analytical and data solutions. As a leader, Niraj focuses on optimizing operations and deriving insights from data for large companies. He is known for his expertise in cloud services, big data, enterprise security, mobility, IoT, and social networks.
