Month: February 2018

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Entrepreneur Profile: Q & A with Rishi Khan, Extreme Scale Solutions

Question: Tell us a little bit about your background and education.

Rishi Khan: I’ve been starting companies since I was in middle school. My first company was a lemonade stand  with my  brother and a friend. My dad financed the initial outlay but made us keep Excel spreadsheets of inventory, sales, P&L, and time spent. I think we broke even, but I learned a lot in the process. In high school I started a tutoring service and I also started two companies while in    college.

I have a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Delaware and a PhD in Computational Biology from a joint  program between the University of Delaware and Thomas Jefferson University. After my PhD, I  started a company with one of my PhD advisors, Dr. James Schwaber, and spent one year as a post doctoral fellow building a proof of concept for a DNA sequencing device that would reduce the then technology cost 1000X.  After my post-doc I joined ET International as the VP of  Research and Development and led projects that brought $8M dollars to the firm over 5 years. I was a Principle Investigator on a number of Dept. of Energy  (DOE) and Dept. of Defense (DOD) high performance computing projects and built a strong network in that field.

Q:  How did the idea of Extreme Scale Solutions arise and develop?

RK:  When I struck out on my own in 2014, the original focus of Extreme Scale Solutions was on the marriage of High Performance Computing and Big  Data, a fusion predicted by Gartner and heavily funded by VCs and the US Government. We originally intended to focus on DOE and DOD Research but started on Enterprise Solutions following a contract from a large Fortune 100 bank. We standardized database configurations and automated for database provisioning reducing a 30 day process with 9 teams to a fully automated 30 minute process.

In 2015, leveraging that initial success, we were contracted by another Fortune 100 bank to build out “Database As a Service”. This included all steps to bring siloed processes from multiple lines of business together into a unified self-service portal for planning,  provisioning, and operations. After this contract, we built a platform, Nubrado, which shortens the journey for large enterprises to move to public cloud, or a private cloud-like environment from years to months.

Additionally, in 2017 we began working with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Qualcomm on building next-generation computer architectures to speed up graph analytics by 1000X within the next five years. We believe these two tracks will converge as operational analytics becomes increasingly graph-oriented.

We often refer to our 3 pillars as R&D, software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, and advisory services. Our R&D keeps us on the forefront of analytics and automation. Our SaaS platform provides planning, automation, and analytics support for large enterprise clouds. Our advisory services supplement our platform by helping companies define process and procedures to align their people with the platform.

Q: So what services, in a nutshell, do you offer companies today?

RK:  Today, we provide a platform that enables large enterprises to migrate from legacy bespoke silos to a public or private unified cloud environment. This involves planning (What do I need to buy? Where will all of the databases go? How will they be isolated? How will the share resources? What databases should I migrate first to minimize cost or risk?), automated migration, automated lifecycle management actions, and operational analytics.

 

Q:  What advice would you give to startups seeking to start a business in the world of IT/big data?

RK:  Work at a startup to gain experience, credibility, network, and a cash hoard on somebody else’s dime. Give yourself a one-year runway (either through bootstrap funding, grants, or VC funding) to see if you can start to make money. Exist in a network of other entrepreneurs such as the Emerging Enterprise Center, Small Business Development Center, and CEO Thinktank®. Fail fast and often, and stick with what sells.

Q:  What’s next for Extreme Scale?

Our major effort is to bring our platform, Nubrado, to alpha customers. We are currently engaging with Oracle on a number of potential customers in banking, insurance, telecom, and other fields. Our goal is to make it easy for large companies to manage massive database landscapes through standardization, automation, manage-many-as-one, management through measured metrics.

In addition, our research arm is focusing on extending work on graph analytic processors to machine learning and other problems that can benefit from software-defined reconfigurable hardware.

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Entrepreneur Profile: Reggie Ezeh, Data Value

Data Value, led by Reggie Ezeh, is a data management and analytics consulting firm.

Reggie has over 20 years’ experience in advanced analytics with Fortune 500 companies across the US and overseas. His experience spans Telecoms, Insurance (P&C, Auto, Health, etc.), Finance and Technology. He has managed local and global analytics projects in excess of $20 million dollars delivering top notch quantifiable value to the business in his previous positions.

Reggie saw a need in the market and a shortage of experienced professionals that can bridge the gap between analytics and business to provide strategic solutions. Having managed analytics, customer experience and marketing at local and global levels, Reggie has first-hand experience on how to transform an enterprise from a reactive, problem solving entity to a proactive and highly optimized one. And that is how Data Value was born.

 

Reggie does acknowledge that the greatest challenge is in helping potential clients – especially those who have never before focused on analytics – understand the profound impact that data can have on their business strategy. “Often times it’s an uphill task trying to sell fresh, insightful strategies backed by data to senior management who have not yet seen or understood the impact of data on today’s business playing field,” says Reggie. But he says that once senior management understands the value of analytics, Data Value is able to implement change that can be very impactful for a company. For example, a change to call center operations for one company led by Data Value resulted in a conversation rate increase from 1.5% to 3.5%!

Reggie plans to employ an intern in the Spring and a full time analyst by summer. When current projects can support it, he also plans to hire an 4-6 additional analysts, as well as local University interns to support clients. Reggie is also considering strategic partnerships with larger prime contractors for broader reach.

With the help of the Emerging Enterprise Center, Reggie now has good insight on how to plan his growth path.  Reggie says, “The EEC has also provided us with invaluable networking opportunities as well as beneficial seminars and workshops. Since joining EEC, we have made some great contacts that are sure be rewarding in the near future.”

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The (Internal) Marketing Plan: Bridging the Gap Between Product Development & Sales

Written by Dora Cheatham, Program Manager, Emerging Enterprise Center

 

How often has a new product been launched and the Sales Team been tasked with the “simple” directive to “go sell” it, armed with little more than a data sheet and price list? One year later, everyone wonders why the sales figures never quite match the numbers projected by Marketing.

An ideal product launch should not only focus on marketing the product to the customer, but also on “marketing” the product internally to assist the Sales Team optimize its sales efforts. Too often, focus is placed on selling to the customer, without effectively training the sales team in the nuances of a product that requires more than just the presentation of features and benefits.

As technologies develop and products become more complex, the more information the Sales Team has on the product, the better they will be able to answer questions knowledgeably and overcome obstacles when working with their customers. Similarly, data gathered by the Sales Team should be cycled back to Marketing to ensure that product is being received and is performing as expected, and any potential issues or improvements can immediately be fed back to the Product Development Team.

 

 

Remember that the sales team is on the front line, so a Marketing Plan or Commercialization Plan should include an element that arms the sales team with as many preemptive answers as possible so that he or she can present the company’s expertise effectively and deliver a consistent product message. So what should be included in this Plan?

Product Positioning

Make sure your sales team understands how and why your product is positioned the way it is. If the product was developed as the result of a recurring problem expressed by several customers, make sure the whole team is aware of it. Just because a customer hasn’t expressed the particular problem, doesn’t mean they haven’t experienced it! If it was developed as the result of a new technology that makes the customer’s job easier, make sure they know it.

If you want your sales team to sell on value rather than price, then you need to make sure they understand the intrinsic value of the product and its benefit to the customer, not just its features and price. What problem does it solve? Will it make the customer more effective? Will it save time or labor?

Target Market

Make sure everyone is on board with precisely which customer segment(s) constitutes the target market, and that the sales team understands the criteria on which the potential market size was developed. If the numbers were developed based on a specific application, and a particular customer ends up using the product differently (it has been known to happen), this is critical information that should be fed back to Marketing and Product Development for further evaluation. Was the original data based on a false premise (hopefully this is never the case), or is this a viable alternative application? If so, can this application be extended across the entire market in which case the potential market has just increased and the information should be distributed to the entire sales team!

Competitive Landscape

What competitive products is your sales team likely to come up against? How does the product perform against these products? How are competitive products used versus pricing? Having spent many years in the chemical industry, I have learned that one of the first things to check for is the dilution rates of chemicals: if a product costs $10.00/litre and needs to be diluted at 1:2, it is NOT cheaper than a $50.00/litre product that can be diluted at 1:12 and offers comparable performance!

Sales Tools

 

 

Don’t just send the sales team off with a data sheet and price list. Testimonials, value calculators, editable presentations, how-to’s and trial protocols (if applicable) all help the sales team present a professional, polished image of a company that understands its market and is working with their customer to help them make an informed purchase.

Product Availability

If the product or service you are offering has customization options, make sure your sales team is fully aware of the criteria for customization: options, minimums, lead times and other requirements. As Carla O’Dell once said, “If you don’t give people information, they’ll make something up to fill the void”, and too often it’s something along the lines of “Of course you can have that in 2 weeks!” This not only creates chaos for the Product Development and Operations teams but can set unrealistic expectations as far as the customer is concerned. Most customers would rather have a realistic 6 week lead time, than constantly be given reasons why an unrealistic 2 week lead time could not be met!

As a final note, while many companies focus on training upon recruitment, they fail to continue this training as products and markets evolve, yet studies have shown that proper training can boost a salesperson’s productivity by 20% and profit margins by much more!