Cecily John-
Sunny Menon, Vice President of Engineering & Professional Services for BigData analytics company RiverLog Software Consulting & Advisory Services, talks to Cecily John, indica contributor about how Big Data and cyber security has become the part of the burgeoning startups and tech companies in the recent years.
RiverLog Software Consulting & Advisory Services is company based out of Silicon Valley, California, USA. The company has been in operations for the past 14 years. RiverLog Software provides systems integration services to fortune 100, fortune 500 companies and has dwelled into SMB space in the recent past. The company specializes in BigData, systems integration and cyber security enforcement for enterprises. Cyber security and application security audit have been their forte. With custom built scripts to conduct vulnerability and black box testing, RiverLog Software provides an executive report that can be shared with Client users and / or onto third parties who are implementers or have hired Riverlog as implementing partner hire to enforce security.
Menon in an interview also revealed about the BigData Application platform WinGrunt, in the cloud that the company will be releasing globally.
Cecily: Tell me about your involvement with RiverLog Software.
Sunny: I evolved as a software engineer working for IBM and then later through several other companies took charge as an enterprise architect for Sun Microsystems; now Oracle. During the course of my consulting career, I had the pleasure to meet with coders, ambitious entrepreneurs, executives and thought leaders, via conferences from which emerged the Riverlog software relationship.
Cecily: What is your role in RiverLog Software?
Sunny: I am a strategic consultant. I do play the role of head of engineering. This role is very consulting oriented. I work with clients, discuss solutions, attend pre and post-sales activities and ultimately deliver quality services to clients.
Cecily: I understand RiverLog Software has various services such as RiverLog’s cyber security and application security audit, bigdata development. Tell me something about the products RiverLog Software has built.
Sunny: RiverLog’s Quantum CMS is one of our biggest implementations in India. Quantum CMS is an e-Governance system meant for academic institutions. It comes in two flavors. A cloud enabled version and an on-premise version. We also provide POS in the cloud for small super markets that enables a POS system running in minutes with incredibly lower costs and yet utilizes touchscreen.
RiverLogs earlier products include Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
Cecily: You mentioned that you are now releasing a bigdata platform in the cloud. Why cloud always?
Sunny: In the recent past technology has gone through what I call as a shuffle. Coupled with that, resource constraints, complex global requirements and legacy systems existing within companies have created several challenges. With agile methodologies activities for smaller projects have become seamless but then larger global projects involving several team members, distributed development centers, third-party vendors and their products; off-the-shelf components and integration with system of records presents bigger challenges. Within all these challenges, having a cloud enabled services does help.
To begin with, deployment overheads are reduced, we now have a single system where issues can be resolved and global rollouts become less challenging.
Another advantage is anytime-anywhere access that clients enjoy with 24X7 support to resolve issues from remote locations. Access to system resources are now seamless in a cloud model. These differ when its on-premise.
Cecily: Are cloud systems secured than on-premise systems?
Sunny: Of-course. We make it secure. That’s our sharp side of the blade.
Cecily: Tell me about the RiverLog’s bigdata product.
Sunny: RiverLog is now releasing a platform in the cloud. This enables companies to tap into hidden data elements and patterns that application has been writing to log files. Within enterprises there are huge amount of files where there could be precious data that may depict various valuable information. These can be dugout and could be utilized to elevate sales, prevent future fraud or predict with 90% accuracy and thereby plan systems for facing such situations. WinGrunt is a biodata platform through which data scientists or developers can write scripts that can provide sampling on data set. Through sampling data scientists can dwell into the realms of data to reveal hidden patterns.
Cecily: What else can RiverLog do?
Sunny: RiverLog is a software company. Fully technical. Our project managers and program managers are all very technical in nature. We are now looking at agricultural space. How can RiverLog bring technology to bring quality in food products
There is a lack of quality food production across the globe. With technology we can reduce destruction caused on but otherwise growing plants or farms. For example, in India there are problems existing in farming. With Artificial intelligence and the convolutional networks combined with imaging, we hope to attack these problems. Biotic or abiotic diseases can be detected very early in the stage and resolution can be sought using various algorithms.
We also intend to provide services free to chosen farmers. We disclosed this in the TechBeatConference.com talk.
Cecily: What is your outlook on iOT?
Sunny: Well, iOT has already seen its fruits. All we need to do is to pluck and assimilate them.
Consumer based companies have already started reaping benefits. “We are already living in a separate world” ~Bob dylan’s words. Without our knowledge we are being led into content on mobile devices which suggest door locks, security, food habits etc. Sometimes those need a little more discussion. When we look at iOT and its connection with sub systems such as AI and Voluminous data that iOT can interface with, I see a shift in paradigm about to happen. According to me a paradigm shift happens slowly and may take about 15 years. We are at the threshold of those 15 years.
Cecily: You mentioned during our conversation earlier that you are writing a book. Tell us about that.
Sunny: I am writing two books. One is on DevOps titled, The story little bird told me. It has been a year since I conceived the idea and there is more to go. I am waiting for more study. My research assistant is working on it and I am reviewing it every week. Pretty soon I will publish it.
The second book is about the paradigm shift I talked about. This may be published earlier than the DevOps book. We will see. The little bird may tell the truth.
Cecily: What do you think about the challenges, enterprises are facing today? Can you give us your understanding and what you have learned?
Sunny: Sure. As mentioned earlier, companies face several challenges today with technology shifting and disruptions occurring sporadically. There is enough footing from administration and reception for disruptions to be elevated as I say. But there is also a looming lethargy. People who have spent enough time within enterprises lack motivation. This culture change is to be inculcated and re-ignited. Also, there still lurks risk aversion. Above all the agility has brought mundane tasks that resources are being asked to execute on a daily basis which do not help in innovation and or disruptions. Innovation doesn’t originate only from research units. In fact as per my observation, innovation, many a times has occurred from engineering divisions. These sporadic rising, eruptions of an intelligent discovery would only happen within a peaceful ecosystem. Therefore enterprises should build such peaceful ecosystem One another way to help resources reduce stress. I liked the Microsoft 4-day work trial
Cecily: Does RiverLog help companies with this culture change?
Sunny: RiverLog’s DevOps initiative helps in implementing a seamless devops environment. Enterprises are already into some sort of devops style. With Agility in the picture there is a lot going on but at the same time a lot more can be done. This is what I am experiencing. I hear people say, “we are very agile”. While this may be true I also see a contradiction that there is no automation done on transferring systems to higher environments, which is very basic. Riverlog with its experience can help companies see through these challenges and enhance the overall value.
Cecily:What else do you do? Your hobbies or extracurricular activities?
Sunny:I am a hiker. I also do boating. Most of all I like very long walks. I walk for miles together. It gives me tremendous peace and along with it lots of ideas.
