Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Lou Guercia, CEO of Scribe Software (Part 4)

My perspective in what’s happening in the cloud is reasonably deep because I’ve been living in it for so long. The three trends that I see at this point won’t probably be new to you. The way that I packaged them might shape what it is we’re doing here for Scribe. Number one is the tsunami that is the cloud. It is growing exponentially faster and especially within the last year. Despite all the negative stories regarding concerns of privacy, security, and the bias against using cloud in certain geographies, there’s an acceptance now that the value of cloud is so overwhelming that it seems like some of these concerns are just eroding. The ubiquity of the cloud is all but assured. That’s the number one driver. >>>

Trying to Turn Carriers and Retailers Into Google: Azzimov CEO Benoît l’Archevêque (Part 4)

Benoît l’Archevêque: There are three revenue models in Azzimov: advertising when you search, the lead generation system that I just explained, and the affiliate model. When someone buys, there’s a percentage take off that. Put that aside. Take that business model, but apply it to mobile. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Lou Guercia, CEO of Scribe Software (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Can you give an example of what type of things are sports teams trying to do with that kind of data?

Lou Guercia: Let’s take the Oakland A’s, for example. You are a baseball fan. They are able to correlate your name and your credit card information to the games you’ve attended such as home games at the Oakland A’s park that you’ve attended. In this case, Oakland A’s will know who sat in what seats for what games. They’ll also know whether or not you’re sitting in one of the regular seats or if you’re a high-flyer and you’re a corporate box holder. They’ll correlate for what games you tend to rent out the big box and then they’ll basically begin marketing to you when teams of that name come up again or if they tend to see that you’re a person that will purchase tickets when East Coast teams comes to your West Coast park. >>>

Trying to Turn Carriers and Retailers Into Google: Azzimov CEO Benoît l’Archevêque (Part 3)

Benoît l’Archevêque: I’ll give you a very quick example. If I do a search on Italian, red, and car, you see a Ferrari. What we have created is a new dynamic knowledge graph where we only store words once. If I have 500,000 bottles of wine, I’m not going to store the word wine 500,000 times because I have 500,000 different bottles of wine. I will store wine once. I will store red once. I will store the words that are not common to create this other group of products. We were able to build a new way of structuring data. We can now take homogeneous and heterogeneous data and deconstruct and reconstruct in real time. For us, it’s a matter of seconds.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Lou Guercia, CEO of Scribe Software (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: If you were to synthesize in this case study, what specifically is your value addition to this use case? Can you summarize and align?

Lou Guercia: Microsoft would say they have the technology assets to solve the challenges that the state is experiencing. Tribridge has worked with other states’ Department of Corrections and brings in industry expertise, having understood the workflow, the disparate types of data sources that are required to develop a world class system for incarceration supervision and rehabilitation. We at Scribe are experts at making sure that the correct data according to the workflow models is of the proper quality – that it’s delivered to the right systems, that error checking and the integrity of that data is absolutely correct. We, essentially, are the data integration piping that runs throughout the state of Illinois system. >>>

Trying to Turn Carriers and Retailers Into Google: Azzimov CEO Benoît l’Archevêque (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year was this?

Benoît l’Archevêque: It was in 1990. One Thursday morning, I lost my job. That noon, I said, “Nobody else will fire me again in my life.” So I started my own advertising agency that’s still running. People were coming to me with their problems thinking that only advertising could solve them. I was not just changing the advertising model; I was just changing the business model. If you’re not shouting the right message, you’re not going to get any more result just because you’re doing more advertising. It’s important to have the right business model.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Lou Guercia, CEO of Scribe Software (Part 1)

There is much going on in the small niches of the cloud. Here’s a discussion that highlights some examples.

Sramana Mitra: Lou, let’s introduce our audience to yourself as well as to Scribe Software.

Lou Guercia: Scribe is a software company. We’re a global provider of solutions focused on allowing enterprises to easily bring customer data anywhere it’s needed regardless of the infrastructure – it can be in the cloud or on-premise. >>>

Trying to Turn Carriers and Retailers Into Google: Azzimov CEO Benoît l’Archevêque (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

We normally only feature companies that have proven concepts in the Entrepreneur Journeys series. This concept, however, is not entirely proven. It is interesting and bold.

Sramana Mitra: Benoit, where are you from? Where were you born and raised? Give us some back story of the Azzimov journey.

Benoît l’Archevêque: It’s a rather peculiar story because I’m a French Canadian. I come from a very low class family from Montreal, Canada. I was actually raised by a plumber and my mother was a Customs Officer – very creative people but not really much into businesses. I was surrounded by people that never really did anything to create a company. They’re not entrepreneurs. I come from a weird place where I didn’t know, at a young age, what an entrepreneur was. The only thing I wanted to do in life was cartoons. I studied Art. >>>