Data has become a valuable corporate asset. In an info-driven business environment, the success of any business, regardless of it being a startup or Fortune 500 company, depends on its ability to implement an effective data strategy that ensures the accuracy, availability, reusability, protection, and performance of its data. The Cloud has also become an essential component of modern businesses for building and managing storage and data strategies. However, the key is to capitalise on the Cloud’s potential to build a winning story. Amit Chaurasia, a seasoned storage professional with insights in data storage, virtualisation, and Cloud, identified this challenge before businesses and decided to address it.
In December 2019, Amit founded Dataneers, a data and Cloud engineering startup, which helps e-commerce, storage product startups and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprise) companies in crafting their data and Cloud strategies and workflow automation.
First generation entrepreneur…
Son of a Central Railway employee, Amit moved to Ulhasnagar, Mumbai when he was just three years old and his father had got transferred to the business capital from Gwalior. Amit pursued his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and completed a postgraduate diploma in business analytics.
Amit said, “Right after finishing my studies, I began working, and my career was advancing rapidly during that period. In October 2006, I joined Veritas in Pune, a product-based company and the stint there became a significant milestone in my career. They were the leaders in the storage industry and provided me with unmatched exposure to cutting-edge technologies. I learned a lot during my eight-year tenure at the firm. After Veritas, I moved to RedHat in Bengaluru, where I worked in their engineering team and played a vital role in developing a critical feature. After two years in Bengaluru, I returned to Pune and worked with a startup called PrimaryIO.
“During my stint with PrimaryIO, I stumbled upon Google’s GSuite, and after reading about it, I completed a certification course. However, I lacked the courage to leave my job and start my own venture as I did not have the investment to develop my own product. Instead, I signed up with Google as a GSuite partner, and fortunately, I began to get customers. In February 2019, my team was dissolved, and I was out of job. Although I had the option to look for another job, I discussed about it with my wife and decided to start my own venture. However, for the first two months, nothing significant happened. Despite my knowledge of allied technologies, I had little experience with Cloud computing and needed to learn more about it.”
{{/usCountry}}“During my stint with PrimaryIO, I stumbled upon Google’s GSuite, and after reading about it, I completed a certification course. However, I lacked the courage to leave my job and start my own venture as I did not have the investment to develop my own product. Instead, I signed up with Google as a GSuite partner, and fortunately, I began to get customers. In February 2019, my team was dissolved, and I was out of job. Although I had the option to look for another job, I discussed about it with my wife and decided to start my own venture. However, for the first two months, nothing significant happened. Despite my knowledge of allied technologies, I had little experience with Cloud computing and needed to learn more about it.”
{{/usCountry}}“After the initial two months of studying and researching, I expanded my partnership as a GSuite partner. By December 2019, I felt confident enough in my business to register it formally, and I established my own company called ‘Dataneers’. It was a significant milestone in my journey as an entrepreneur. Since then, Dataneers has continued to grow, and I have been able to build a team and expand services,” Amit said.
Data engineering
Even though Amit formally started Dataneers, he worked as consultant for a couple of companies to support the venture financially. And then Covid-19 pandemic struck. Fortunately, Dataneers managed to get business during the lockdown period also as everybody was working from home with more emphasis on data management and Cloud services.
Explaining the concept and what Dataneers does, Amit said, “Dataneers specialises in data and Cloud engineering, with two main areas of focus: data and Cloud. In terms of data, Dataneers offers complete data management services, from storing data generated by end-point devices like desktops, laptops, ERP, or any other software. Many companies, especially MSME companies that are not IT or technology-focused, generate data but struggle to manage it effectively. In the wake of Covid-19, businesses have now become more aware of the critical value of data and the need to store it securely and cost-effectively for extended periods. Dataneers helps customers meet these challenges by providing data storage, protection, and security services, as well as Backup as a Service, in partnership with market-leading backup software provider Veeam.”
“As a managed service provider for Veeam, Dataneers can implement Veeam’s backup products and provide technical support to customers. Additionally, Dataneers offers data migration services to the Cloud and analytics services to extract insights and predictions from protected and migrated data. Dataneers can also build data pipelines to organise and filter scattered, unorganised database and facilitate analytics and insights generation,” Amit said.
Infrastructure and application modernisation
“Google Cloud is particularly advantageous for developers and startups building new products, thanks to its clean environment and superior ecosystem,” claims Amit.
“As authorised partners of Google Cloud, we can offer our customers significant cost advantages. For semiconductor design companies that require software simulations with heavy processing power, we offer cost-effective solutions to help them run operations. Another use case for our Cloud services is providing complete automation of the software development lifecycle for startups,” Amit said.
“For companies looking to modernise their infrastructure and applications, particularly those using in-house servers or applications, we provide hybrid solutions that allow them to leverage the Cloud without compromising their concerns about it. Some infrastructure can remain on-premises while the majority is on the Cloud. Our application modernisation solutions specialize in serverless deployment, which can reduce application running costs by up to 50 per cent by using managed services,” Amit said.
Sharing customer experiences, Amit said, “We are sector agnostic and our customer retention is almost 90 per cent. Any company using technology will either need data or Cloud services. A SaaS company based in the Middle East, concerned about their application’s scalability, has now found peace of mind after migrating to the Cloud. Our services have enabled them to develop the complete backend of an Algorand based DAO application on AWS Lambda (serverless, event-driven compute service) and deploy all 3-tier applications with CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery/continuous deployment) on AWS.
“Additionally, we have provided GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) deployment of a customer’s development and production environment, archived 35TB of a customer’s data on the Cloud at a low cost, and set up a fully automated Cloud-based backup for a design company in Chennai.”
MSMEs do not need ERP
Dataneers helps MSMEs in their digital transformation journey. Amit said, “It is not necessary for MSMEs to have an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. Our approach is to assist them in automating their workflows, modules, and processes across business functions at a significantly lower cost than acquiring or developing an ERP. Through the utilisation of low code, minimal resources, and low maintenance, we aim to increase efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness.”
“We have implemented automation solutions for MSMEs using Google Workspace. These include creating a sales CRM (customer relationship management) for a glass vendor by extracting data from emails; developing a service ticketing system for a customer service company; establishing a location-based reporting system for field employees of a sales company and extracting data from images and PDF files and storing it in a database,” Amit said.
Explaining how Dataneers deploys low code application development for the MSME companies, Amit said, “Low code development refers to the process of creating software applications using minimal code, typically by using visual drag-and-drop interfaces and pre-built components. It allows developers to automate workflows and create applications faster and with fewer resources than traditional software development methods. This approach is particularly useful for MSMEs who may have limited resources or budget for software development.”
“The benefits of low-code development are significant, and many businesses are starting to take notice. Low-code development platforms have the potential to make software development up to 10 times faster than traditional methods. This efficiency can help businesses achieve their digital transformation goals faster and at a lower cost. We have seen a growing interest in low-code development in the MSME sector. Our services have been successful in automating workflows for these companies while writing less code, resulting in faster development times and reduced costs. As a result, we are gaining traction and helping MSMEs to achieve their software development goals with minimal resources,” he said.
Data privacy and security
On data privacy and best practices, Amit said, “Data privacy refers to the protection of sensitive or personal information from unauthorised access, use, or disclosure. It is crucial to understand that all stakeholders have a role to play in maintaining the security of data and systems. Hence, Dataneers deploys a zero-trust policy which is a security model that assumes no user or device can be trusted by default, regardless of their location or access privileges. Every access request must be verified and authenticated before access is granted, and access is granted only to specific resources required to perform the task. This approach reduces the risk of unauthorised access or malicious activity, as it ensures that users and devices are only allowed to access what they need to do their job.”
Next moves
Sharing his plans for future, Amit said, “In the coming year, our company aims to become a premier partner with Google Cloud, with a team of 25 people. We plan to focus on the MSME market, which still has a huge chunk of on-premises data, and we aim to expand our services to reach this market. Currently, we have about 70 customers and 5TB of data managed by Dataneers and we aim to grow this to around 20x its current size, which is about 1PB (1024TB) 5TB, from a data perspective.”
“Additionally, we plan to launch a new offering - Network Attached Storage (NAS) - which is designed for companies that do not want to migrate their data to the Cloud and prefer to store their data on-premises, especially design companies. We plan to target the 20TB to 1PB segment for this product and provide all necessary enterprise support, including deployment and implementation. We can also deploy it on refurbished hardware to provide cost-effective solutions for our customers. We will be further evaluating the market demand to determine future growth plans. With our enterprise-level support and expertise, we believe this new product will appeal to many companies who want to keep their data on-premises, but still require reliable and scalable storage solutions,” Amit said.