Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: A Second Conversation with Mark Settle, CIO of BMC (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: My understanding of the large-enterprise cloud adoption dynamics would probably synthesize with what I have seen. Is that also what you see?

Mark Settle: Yes. You have part of the big hardware vendors – the BCE consortium, VMware, Cisco, or EMC – in order to engineer and sell a pre-integrated stack of server storage and network capability that you can think of as a unit of compute. Then you can just scale that by buying additional blocks of hardware capacity. That type of offering would come from companies like Dell, IBM, or others. To get to your point: Some of the large enterprises aren’t trying to go back to reverse engineering or existing hardware environments. When they go forward, they say: “Let me start building my private cloud as new challenges or new development opportunities come along. I’ll try to leverage that private cloud hardware capability that I brought in. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: A Second Conversation with Mark Settle, CIO of BMC (Part 1)

Mark Settle is the chief information officer of BMC, a Houston-based company that provides software solutions to any size business. Mark has been in this position for four years. Before BMC, he worked as CIO of Corporate Express and Arrow Electronics, and he was executive vice president of the Systems & Processing division of Visa. In this interview he explains new trends in cloud computing, big data management, and how these affect medium-sized and large businesses.

Sramana Mitra: Welcome back to the Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing series, Mark.  We have talked before, so our audience knows you. I think the last time we spoke was some time ago, and we were still trying to figure out how America or the world was looking at cloud computing as a trend. At this point, the trend is sweeping over the IT-infrastructures around the world.  There is no ambiguity – the trend is here to stay and cloud adaption is quite significant. In today’s conversation, I would like to address some specific issues which you have a lot of insight to. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Omer Artun, CEO of AgilOne (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of competition are you seeing on the market? I know there is a lot of activity in the data space right now, and everybody wants to be categorized on their big data these days. It sounds as though you have relatively mature capabilities since you have been in business for seven years working with real customers. What do you consider as real competition? >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Omer Artun, CEO of AgilOne (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The clustering itself is dynamic? Are you coming up with algorithmic clusters?

Omer Artun: That is right. The platform we use runs on a Hadoop-based framework, and it is cascading frameworking. It also has algebraic contruction tecniques (ART) integrated. This way, we can run these algorithms in a scalable, multi-tenant way. Basically, each customer gets its own clusters. Or each customer gets its own propensity model.  The whole process of pattern recognition, feature generation, feature selection, classifier design, and system design is implemented into cascading in a fully configurable way. Out of the box the marketer gets a bunch of things to use automatically. For example, if they want to predict people with green eyes, we can do that, too. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Omer Artun, CEO of AgilOne (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of customers were you working with before you raised the money? You mentioned that you built your business in a bootstrap mode, and then demand for your company or products went up. That is when you decided to move to Silicon Valley. Tell me a bit about what happened in the pre-funding incarnation of the company. Who were the early adapters of this kind of technology? >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Omer Artun, CEO of AgilOne (Part 1)

Omer Artun is the founder of AgilOne, a company which provides cloud-based predictive customer analytics. He studied at Brown University and holds a PhD in computational neuroscience/machine learning and physics. He previously worked for McKinsey & Company and for the marketing division of Best Buy. Seven years ago he decided to found his own company to apply his expertise to medium-sized businesses.

Sramana Mitra: Omer, let’s start with some context.  Tell us a little bit about your company. How long has it been in business? I know you are moving from stealth mode to a more public launch, so please give us some context.

Omer Artun: I started the company about seven years ago. I bootstrapped it from no revenue to having about 40 employees when I received the first funding.  I started the company out of firsthand frustration that I had as a marketer. I used to run marketing for a division of Best Buy – Best Buy for Business – and before that I was VP of marketing at Microwarehouse, which was a direct marketer of computers and related products. Before that I did strategic consultant for McKinsey, and I have a PhD in machine learning. When I was running these marketing departments, which had millions of customers, millions of transactions, and billions of clicks, there was so much information in this data which could be utilized [to make] better marketing decisions. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Omer Artun, CEO of AgilOne (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How did you convince your first couple of customers to go with you?

Omer Artun: They were people whom I helped as a consultant. Once I built up trust with them, I told them I could do what this other vendor was doing for them much cheaper and better. That is how I received my first contract. Then I got several more and after that you have a story to tell, that you have been doing this for a year or two. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Omer Artun, CEO of AgilOne (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What e-commerce systems do they work with?

Omer Artun: This doesn’t matter to us. It is a rest API.  Any e-commerce system can pull the data out of it. If you think about the day in a life of a marketer, we are trying to do other things than just starting up recommendations or cluster IDs. >>>