MarTech360 Interview With Srini V. Srinivasan, CTO & Founder, Aerospike, Inc.

“People now realize that processing more data in real time to make more accurate decisions improves user experiences so profoundly that it becomes a critical competitive advantage for driving strong business growth.”

Hi, Srini, could you tell us about your professional journey so far and what sets Aerospike, Inc. apart from the competition?

We founded Aerospike with one important goal, never to sacrifice speed for scale. This principle is still in use today as we continue to evolve the Aerospike Real-time Data Platform to process today’s tsunami of data in real-time at an unlimited scale. Our journey started in the early 2000s when we built AdTech and mobile applications at Yahoo! I noted then that the growth of data and the need to manipulate it in real-time for accurate business outcomes would only grow exponentially.

Of course, the advent of artificial (AI) and machine learning (ML) gave us more tools to employ. But perhaps the holy grail for Aerospike is our patented Hybrid Memory Architecture (HMA) that allows us to better store and move data than our competitors. HMA, combined with support for geographically distributed synchronous and asynchronous replication, sets Aerospike apart from the competition in its ability to deliver real-time SLAs at scale with very high uptime at an affordable cost. This combination enables everyone to build new real-time big data applications that would have been impractical to create even a few years ago.

How, according to you, has real-time technology adoption in enterprises changed in the last few years?

It’s become a strategic imperative. Today, people want instant, accurate outcomes. Whether it’s fraud protection when using a credit card, moving funds around the world, playing online games, or smart manufacturing, real-time data is employed. As such, our customers expect predictable performance at an unlimited scale, with low latency, and at an affordable cost. And we deliver that consistently.

In 2021, an incredible 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. 90% of the world’s data may have been created in the last two years. Experts project that the volume of data will double every two years. So it’s not a coincidence that the best companies and category leaders in key markets are processing large volumes of data from multiple sources for real-time decisioning to power right-now economics.

People now realize that processing more data in real time to make more accurate decisions improves user experiences so profoundly that it becomes a critical competitive advantage for driving strong business growth.

Also Read: MarTech360 Interview With Amanda Elam, Chief Marketing Officer, Bloomreach

What is the role of real-time data in MarTech and AdTech today?

Digital ad ecosystems are changing as the battle for consumer attention heats up. People are increasingly concerned about privacy and fraud, while companies are struggling to understand the future of consumer identity, especially with the rise of direct-to-consumer services and the changing cookie and mobile identifier environment. AdTech companies such as The Trade Desk and Criteo use real-time data throughout the digital ad ecosystem to better predict what ad to serve and when and to whom to serve it.

Regarding MarTech, there is a movement to marry AdTech data with MarTech data to create a 360-degree customer view. Data can come from CRM, a CMS, transactional account platforms, visits to a corporate website, online or brick-and-mortar store transactions, interactions with a company’s social media platforms, or email list registrations. The next step is data modeling with both first- and third-party data sources.

The Aerospike Real-time Data Platform differs from relational databases as it supports flexible schema. Typically, Aerospike data modeling starts with identifying the patterns of access in the application, that is, how the application reads and updates the data. The goal is to organize data for performance, efficiency, and consistency. We often denormalize the schema and organize data in a document model (JSON) to make it easy for applications to be written using modern document-oriented techniques (e.g., nested structures that include maps and lists). These document applications can now run efficiently by avoiding the expensive joins that have to be done in a relational model.

How is Aerospike helping small businesses or startups with affordability and the growth gap compared to the bigger fish in the tank?

One of the most critical decisions a company can make is which database to start with. You need a database that will scale with the amount and type of data you are computing, and you need a database that preserves operational costs as real-time transactions grow. It makes no sense if costs increase unsustainably with the amount of data ingested and computed. You’ll soon go broke.

The Aerospike Real-time Data Platform is purpose-built to maintain low operational costs while scaling to meet demand. Another vital reason to choose the correct database is that re-platforming is expensive and time-consuming. About a dozen startups that started with Aerospike early in their life completed an IPO several years later, proving that Aerospike provides unlimited scaling for companies undergoing hypergrowth.

How has customer behavior online changed in the last two decades?

In 1998, roughly 0.2% of all retail purchases were made online, according to the Department of Commerce. In the fourth quarter of 2019, online purchases made up nearly 12% of all retail sales in the U.S. — or $158 billion. Compare that to the 38% increase in e-commerce sales in 2020, and it’s easy to see we live in The Right Now Economy. This economy is driven by the desire for accurate, instant outcomes. If your Uber is late, you switch to Lyft. If your bank cannot provide a transaction with a few taps on your mobile device, you will consider another bank.

Another interesting behavior change is that despite 59% of people agreeing they are concerned about how retailers use their data, 51% confirmed they would still be more likely to share personal data with a brand they trust.

So we know the future of life online requires a high degree of trust. The Aerospike Real-time Data Platform allows developers to build secure real-time applications with personalization. Our recommendation engine also helps target the right buyer at the right time. This all adds up to creating a positive, pleasurable experience for the consumer, who will return to the e-commerce platform to make another purchase.

How successfully are NoSQL databases supporting high-performance data processing to meet an organization’s data demands while also helping them to scale their business?

I learned my database technology quite a while ago, and I noticed firsthand that these older systems essentially failed to support internet-scale applications resulting in the growth of many NoSQL databases. The innovation driven by NoSQL databases, including Aerospike, has been a critical enabler for the development of hundreds of new kinds of applications that could not have been built using the earlier database technology.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that many of these organizations would not have been able to scale their solutions to hundreds of millions and billions of users without using these technologies. The largest companies in many industries use these NoSQL technologies extensively, like financial services, telco, e-commerce, gaming, and others.

In today’s multi-core and multiprocessor architectures, what is a company risking if they are not deploying real-time data or analytics tools?

The main risk of not using the latest technologies is falling behind in the quality of the real-time user experience, which could affect customer retention and reduce revenue growth. Understanding user behavior in real-time is necessary to establish and maintain a competitive advantage in a fast-changing world where users expect an extraordinarily fast real-time turnaround.

Could you name one other CTO that you would like to see featured here?

Dag Liodden, CTO at Crisp.

Could you name the Top 5 apps/platforms you use for marketing/sales?

1. Salesforce
2. Highspot
3. Demandbase
4. Marketo
5. LinkedIn

Do you have any words of wisdom you would like to share with budding entrepreneurs?

My main advice for entrepreneurs is to pick a problem they like to work on and are extremely passionate about. Starting something new is very hard. If one does not like the area of work, it will be virtually impossible to persevere and overcome the many large obstacles that every startup inevitably faces before it is a success.

Thanks, Srini!