World’s 10 Best Data Integration Solution Providers 2022

1. VOL.06 | ISSUE 08 | 2022 www.insightssuccess.com , ModernTech Data Integra?on and Cloud Accessibility The Next Step AIOps and the Future of the IT Space A Ad dr ri ia an n K Kn na ap pp p Founder & CEO Aparavi Your Go-To Platform for All Things Data

4. editor Driving Data, Sky Rocketing Businesses rom scratching stones and igniting the fire, drilling rigs, and extracting oil to integrating the binary code F and erupting meaningful software systems, humans have come a long way. Once challenged by the age of supercomputers, there are many tech marvels that are changing the business dynamics of today and opening up new opportunities enabling a flourished tomorrow. This explains a very intricate blessing Managing Editor humans are showered with—Intelligently Creative. Bhushan Bhad While intelligence has been helping human society to look beyond the curve, it is the agile development of technology- oriented systems that utilize binary simulations and uproots solutions that not only facilitate nurturing the business community but also emerge with new technologies for the better. Referring to the technological marvels, software systems cannot be left unnoticed. Known as the future ahead of the mighty industry resource—oil, data has taken up the throne to be the king. And as widely understood, it is the kingmaker that steals the throne rather than the mighty king, and the same applies to the data that has been grabbing the global spotlight. But, many systems have been contributing to social development in general and business development in particular. However, the credit stands in the palm of data integration experts and entrepreneurs who are using this

5. , Data will make most people better off, in terms of productivity as well , as exercising free will. technology development to come up with a solution. These mind-boggling upgrades not only facilitate ease of experience but also encapsulate a large pool of business challenges, integrate data, utilize modern technology, apply human intelligence and strengthen the industry with one of a unique kind data integration system. Realizing this, we at Insights Success came up with an edition that may drive you into the world of data and astonish you with the innovative approach of Global Techpreneurs who have surprised the data enthusiast. Dive into our latest edition, “World’s 10 Best Data Integration Solution Providers 2022,” and learn the art of unleashing data matrix with the insightful articles opined by our in-house editorial team. I hope you have an inspiring read.

6. 08 Aparavi Your Go-To Platform for All Things Data ARTICLES 28 34 ModernTech The Next Step Data Integra?on and AIOps and the Future Cloud Accessibility of the IT Space

7. C Clever Ads Empowering Business with Effec?ve Adver?sing Tools 16 O Cyclr Enabling Seamless Development, 22 Execu?on, and Governance of Integra?on Flows N elas?c.io 30 The Most Sought-a?er iPaaS Provider T Etlworks Providing Fundamental Data 36 Integra?on Solu?ons E Relokia Enabling Businesses Make Effortless 40 Data Migra?on N SyncSpider GmbH A Leading Integra?on Pla?orm in the 46 E-commerce Arena T Toro Cloud Venturing Beyond Excellence 52 S

8. Editor-in-Chief Merry D’souza Anish Miller Senior Editor Bhushan Bhad Managing Editor Assisting Editors Trishika, Shrutika Visualiser David King Art & Design Head Rohil Shinganapurkar Co-designer Paul Belin Art & Design Assistant Mrunalinee Deshmukh Business Development Manager Sherin Rodricks Marketing Manager Joseph D'souza Business Development Executives Kelly, David Sales Executives Mark, Alice Technical Head Jacob Smile Assistant Technical Head Amar Sawant Technical Consultants Prachi, Rajeshwari Alina Sege Digital Marketing Manager Assistant Digital Marketing Manager Renuka Kulkarni SME-SMO Executive Gemson Research Analyst Eric Smith Circulation Manager Tanaji Fartade sales@insightssuccess.com June, 2022 Corporate Ofce Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-859-2600 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com www.twitter.com/insightssuccess Follow us on : www.facebook.com/insightssuccess/ We are also available on : RNI No.: MAHENG/2018/75953 Copyright © 2022 Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd., All rights reserved. The content and images used in this magazine should not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from Insights Success. Reprint rights remain solely with Insights Success.

9. WORLD'S 10 BEST DATA INTEGRATION SOLUTION PROVIDERS 2022 Featuring Company Brief Aparavi Aparavi has always endeavored to be the best at what it does – Adrian Knapp solve problems of and regarding data. garaparavi.com Founder and CEO Clever Ads offers a suite of free advertising solutions for SMBs, Manuel Climent Clever Ads providing them a fighting chance to grow and compete against CEO cleverads.com bigger players out there. Cyclr Cyclr is a prominent name among the embedded integration Fraser Davidson platforms for SaaS. cyclr.com CEO Datasource Consulting not only remains close to the latest technology and industry trends, but it also helps move the Datasource Consulting Steve Dine needle with thought leadership in areas such as Business datasourceconsulting.com Managing Partner Intelligence in the Cloud, Agile Business Intelligence, Strategic Analytics and Big Data. elastic.io combines the tools and features necessary to address Dr. Kevin J Mobbs elastic.io the complexity of real-world enterprise integration scenarios Managing Director elastic.io with an easy-to-use graphical user interface. Etlworks was founded in 2016 by Maksym Sherbinin and Maksym Sherbinin Etlworks Artem Avdonin with a focus on user-friendly cloud data CEO etlworks.com integration. As a division of WTC Communications, ITP has over 120 Integrated Partner Narendra Prasad years of experience in the communications and electronic Solutions CEO equipment business. na-ips.com Relokia is a platform that helps businesses to deal with a wide Relokia Maxim Orlovsky swath of data issues. relokia.com CEO SyncSpider SyncSpider provides a cloud-based multichannel integration Norbert Strappler syncspider.com tool that helps online retailers to grow revenue. Founder and CEO Toro cloud provides a single platform to seamlessly integrate Toro Cloud David Brown and automate the workflow of an organization. torocloud.com Founder and CEO

10. Cover Story Aparavi

11. Adrian Knapp Founder & CEO Aparavi

12. World’s 10 Best Data Integra?on Solu?on Provides 2022 ne cannot disregard the fact that evolution in technology has throttled humanity's development O to a scale where most of the important things in our life—food, healthcare, finance—can be accessed at out fingertips. However, one can also not disregard the flipside of the coin—cybersecurity risks, fraud, data privacy threats. In the business world, the capability to solve a problem is what gives you an edge, making you stand out from the crowd. When it comes to the problems of those critical aspects of technology, companies across the world strive to demonstrate their expertise in solving them. Such companies encompass the potential to bring about paradigm shifts and carve their own identity. Among such companies, Aparavi has always endeavored to be the best at what it does – solve problems of and regarding data. We optimize secure access for modern data demands of analytics, machine learning, and collaboration, connecting Delivering the Data Intelligence and Automation Platform, business and IT to transform data into a competitive asset. Aparavi helps organizations find and unlock the value of We augment tons of great existing solutions in the data no matter where it lives. Its cloud-based platform finds, governance, compliance, backup, archive and machine automates, governs, and consolidates distributed data. learning and artificial intelligence space. We clean, prepare, and optimize before you ingest into those vertical solutions. In the following interview, Adrian Knapp, the Founder and CEO, shares valuable insights about Aparavi's unique Although we have a single platform, it is utilized for offerings, its proficiencies in the world of data, and the numerous different use cases which we share as solutions blueprints of its future goals. ranging from data discovery and clean up, M&A Integrations, cloud data migrations with intelligence, and Following are the highlights of the interview: more, however the vast volume of 'Data Services' provided and delivered by our MSPs who are data experts with in- Please brief our audience about Aparavi, its USPs, and depth experience in customer verticals including financial how it is currently positioned as a leading player in the services, insurance, legal data services, healthcare as well Data Intelligence and Automation solutions niche. as data services such as tape data discovery and migration. Every company has too much data! Data is great but only if Adrian, please brief us about your journey in the you keep the data that has value. There is far too much data industry, and how you have contributed towards the that shouldn't exist and creates no value but cyber risks and company's success. crazy costs. Data storage is NOT cheap as the industry wants you to think. It is super expensive and risky in reality. I have been in the data centric business with different But I do not expect the creators of the problems to solve it. companies for over 20+ years, and continually fascinated by data, how it has evolved, the scale, creation and sharing Aparavi is the solution to the problem. We help cleaning of data has created both opportunity for innovation data, shrink data footprint to the max and get the best value acceleration especially in collaboration of minds, out of it. That is what our data intelligence and automation organizations, applications and the utilization of AI, platform does better than any other tool in the market. With machine, and deep learning as well as much complexity, deep intelligence that rapidly discovers duplicates, risk, and untapped value. Many organizations are still automatically classifies, and optimizes highly distributed operating like it is the 1990's. It is fascinating how much data to mitigate risk, reduce costs and exploit data value, we the right data at the right time can be both truly are the trusted disrupter in the sector. revolutionary and a disaster at the same time.

13. Looking at the data ecosystem of vendors from storage Let's break this down, clearly AI, machine learning, deep hardware, processing systems, cloud storage and many learning technologies and algorithms are rapidly evolving, players making copies of data for high availability, data however they are only as good as the data that is feeding protection, which unfortunately have no idea of the real- them. The data must be found, cleaned, and ingested world impact of the data nor its value to the business or efficiently to ensure optimal trusted results. With trash data potential harm to the business. in the mix, you slow down the whole operation. Much data integration and analytics vendors have grown Our platform has several elements of data learning or especially, but this still focusses on structured data in cognitive capability which we are evolving toward our databases and then integration between application- longer-term vision of data independence from locked down controlled data such as CRM, ERP, collaboration by applications or other systems. applications such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Slack and others. As it pertains to solutions to expect the mind boggles as every time, we discuss with our end user customers and Silo upon silo control of data does not help you understand MSPs, new use cases are thought of and in many cases, what data you have so you can build efficient life cycle they have deployed our platform for one challenge and then management of the data, mitigate risk, reduce cost, and used for numerous other data management areas. truly exploit your data for competitive advantage. Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what I believe there is a much better way starting with initial challenges did you face and how did you drive augmenting such silos with intelligence and automation and your company to sustain operations while ensuring truly transform data utilization versus all the vendors safety of your employees at the same time? fighting over who has control. That is why I started Aparavi. Aparavi is fairly distributed in the US with team members on the West coast, East Coast and Central so we were What impact has the adoption of modern technologies already quite used to working remote and collaborating such as AI and machine learning had on the Data closely over video communication software. Intelligence and Automation solutions niche and what more could be expected in the future?

15. consultant or an integrator. Just do what you think works best for the users based on a problem you saw and solve. How do you envision scaling Aparavi's operations and offerings in 2021? I envision nothing for 2021. My thoughts go into 22 and 23. This year we opened up a major office in Munich, Germany and staffed rapidly headed up by Gregor Bieler as CEOof Europe who was the GM at Microsoft Germany. Our route- to-market is also accelerating globally as traditional VARs transform to Managed Service Providers, we offer our software platform so that MSPs can deliver numerous Data Services powered by Aparavi. This works well with the trusted relationship between the end customer and the MSP with the power of data intelligence and automation of Aparavi to truly know their data and transform their data ecosystem, mitigating risk, reducing runaway costs, and more importantly how to exploit their data for business advantage. An increase in companywide communication on the company progress, as well as on any pandemic news. The Going on, my focus is on giving our solution into the hands support and leadership from our HR team also kept of the businesspeople. IT sets it up – users operate. Think employees apprised on official news and a number of like your smart home. A specialist plans and installs the support programs for personnel shared for all to take technology. That is your IT department or your MSP. Then advantage of through uncertain times across the globe. It it is on the businesspeople to manage, exploit and optimize was time to get personal and that we are all in this together data. If legal needs a legal hold they can quarantine and all react differently. The team really huddled together potential compromised information/data before they even albeit virtually and pushed on. fire out the hold. All power to the user is where we want to go. Making sure we develop our Platform this way and What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs have appropriate marketing/sales approach will keep us who aspire to venture into the Data Integration super busy. Operations wise I'm not worried with the team solutions market? we have. Frist of all I do not like to give unrequested advice to anybody. Data is the lifeblood of nearly every business today from transactions to analytics, production, and inventory systems and more so the dependency on data availability is mission critical, but not everyone manages their data the same way. There are tons of misconceptions. I bet many of you have heard 'data is the new oil.' No way! Wrong. Oil is not indefinite – data is. Oil is not created by everybody – data is. Find your own spot in this market but think about yourself first and go from there. What is bothering you that is based on data? And find a better way doing it. You either want to completely reinvent as Aparavi does, or you can be a

18. World’s 10 Best Data Integra?on Solu?on Provides 2022 Clever Ads he internet has evidently changed every aspect of Clever Ads is now positioned as a leading player in the the human life. It has brought the whole world to market thanks to its technology. Using Machine Learning and AI algorithms to automate the ad creation and T our screens on a single click – providing an endless repository of information. Moreover, it provides platforms automation processes, we keep the costs of our services where people spend most of their time connecting, sharing, lower than other competitors while also offering most of and learning. our features at no cost. With the ever-increasing number of internet users, Our customers, who are largely SMBs and ecommerce digitalization is taking over and transforming everything businesses, have a growing need for marketing and know to us. In the process, it has brought forth new advertising actions but can hardly afford to hire an agency business platforms too. or the human resources needed to set and manage the strategies manually. Where there are people, there is a business opportunity, and it would be right to call the internet a treasure trove of Clever Ads has been a pioneer using this cost structure and opportunities. An example of internet empowerment, digital developing the technology needed to offer high-quality marketing and advertising are the new ways of bringing a advertising services. As we put our extensive advertising business into the spotlight. knowledge into services that are backed by partnerships with Google, Facebook, and Microsoft right into customer's A plethora of companies are striving to capture this hands. opportunity and a growing market by delivering cutting- edge services and solutions. One prominent name in that list Furthermore, partnering and sharing our growth and is Clever Ads, a company that helps clients get the most of expansion with the mentioned platforms as well as with their online advertising strategies by improving their other ecommerce-focused sites such as BigCommerce, Google Ads campaigns with free Google Advertising tools. PrestaShop, and Shopify, we've acquired a deep In the following interview, Manuel Climent, the CEO, sheds light on the inception of Clever Ads, its offerings, the future of digital advertising, and his vision for the company. Please brief our audience about Clever Ads, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a leading player in the data integration solutions niche. Clever Ads offers a suite of free advertising solutions for SMBs, providing them a fighting chance to grow and compete against bigger players out there. With Clever Ads, companies can create, optimize, and manage their online advertising strategies all in one place and at no extra cost. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 16

19. Manuel Climent, CEO of Clever Ads, has a physics background and worked for eight years as an engineer in a mul?na?onal company, specifically as a project manager. He then decided to become an entrepreneur associa?ng himself with very leading-edge digital marke?ng experts and developers Manuel Climent back in 2012 while working in strategy CEO and management. Clever Ads Together, they realized they could escalate and automate the adver?sing crea?on and op?miza?on process, 'pack' it, and sell it. From that ?me moving forward, Manuel has been very successful in gathering all the insight and input from the market, Google, Facebook, and other industry key players. Understanding how the market is going to evolve and plan accordingly, is how Manuel directs strategies. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 17

20. understanding of their needs through the customer's At this moment, all physical stores are entering the virtual perspective. Another key differentiator factor is our world with a fast-growing ecommerce sector. Not that many brilliant, dynamic, and energetic team of highly qualified years ago if you wanted to buy something, you'd go to a young experts. store. We're normalizing now, thanks to the technology evolution, that we can go to platforms like Google or What other products does Clever Ads offer, and how are Amazon and purchase items there. This is now a natural these making an impact on the industry and your motion still in adoption, and there's a long way to go, but clients? Clever Ads is doing its part for that development. Clever Ads, as mentioned before, includes a series of free When a new technology arises, there's always someone more advanced that tends to become the trendsetter and advertising products including a campaign creator, ads audit, keyword planner, banner creator, ads manager mobile take the cake. Then over time, governments regulate it and app, and many integrations with platforms like Slack, divide it in order to prevent monopolies that normally stop Microsoft Teams, and Google Sheets. innovation. Companies such as Google, Facebook, or Amazon, will Another product line is Clever ecommerce, which focuses on specific adapted products for ecommerce businesses and need to be divided as they don't allow smaller players to includes campaign creation, optimization, and management enter the market and everyday people don't benefit from features. that monopoly. With this in mind, at Clever Ads we're moving fast to offer multi-platform services, adding value When we started back in 2012, we were only focusing on with a smart budget balancer. This way, we won't depend on Google Ads creation and optimization services powered by these platforms, and we can offer our clients a fair and non- our Google Ads Creator product. Now, this product is just a skewed optimization when it comes to their advertising small part of our ecosystem. As we were constantly spend. This neutral position is the one we'll work from for a understanding and interpreting our customer's needs, we've fairer future. been very fast and agile when answering to those market needs with new products and features. Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive Our last bid, our Ads Management Mobile App, has been Clever Ads to sustain operations while ensuring safety of launched as a response to the huge and increasing demand your employees at the same time? for multiplatform mobile apps which promises to be a big leg of our future. Clever Ads has now become a fully At Clever Ads, we've followed the stipulated regulations integrated advertising management platform. and worked remotely during the pandemic. Previously, we had everything prepared and developed so all our Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion employees could work remotely; we had done some test on what impact has the adoption of modern technologies runs in the past. From an operative standpoint, it wasn't a such as AI and machine learning had on the data challenge for us to perform all our operations remotely. integration solutions niche and what more could be Also, our communication with stakeholders has always expected in the future? been carried out this way. The only part that was affected was our personal interaction with fellow team members. We It's really interesting to see how the world evolves are transitioning back into office life at the moment. according to the arising technologies and how they transform the day-to-day life, the reality, and the What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs environment we live in. We've gone from an offline planet who aspire to venture into the data integration solutions to a completely online and digital planet. Technologies market? come and we adapt, using them to build new things: from businesses to personal relationships. My advice would be to be very connected with the market and the environment and dedicate a lot of time to deeply The computing power technologies have now allowed us to know and understand the niche and its needs. Also, it's key to find a very specific niche to operate in; digital marketing automate many processes. Applied to our case, if you set a has many disciplines, and you can easily lose focus. This machine to learn about advertising campaigns optimization, at first the results will be poor, but as it learns, results will was crucial for Clever and its success. get better and much faster than manual working. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 18

24. World’s 10 Best Data Integra?on Solu?on Provides 2022 Enabling Seamless Development, Execution, and Governance of Integration Flows s technology becomes key to To provide for this requirement, Cyclr, that can distract from a software the adoption of digitalization now a prominent name among the vendor’s core product development. A and business processes, arenas embedded integration platforms for Cyclr has been designed to enable like iPaaS are quickly gaining SaaS, came into existence. SaaS and software companies to momentum. The iPaaS or integration rapidly scale and adapt their native, platform as a service is a complex and In the following interview, Fraser in-app integrations with a suite of delicate equation. Davidson, CEO, Cyclr, shares with us low-code tools. in detail about the company’s journey Software integration is essential to in the Embedded iPaaS arena and his As a leader in the Embedded iPaaS handle the complexities of modern outlook on the promising future space, we have developed our solution business systems and to manage niche prospects. to substantially reduce the technical requirements like hybrid cloud resources required by software adoption, and such integration requires Please brief our audience about companies to create, publish, and a personal touch to understand the Cyclr, its USPs, and how it is maintain their integrations. various complexities associated with currently positioned as a leading the client’s specific business. player in the data integration We have been serving this market for Furthermore, it also requires solutions niche. over five years and have garnered tremendous expertise in software substantial experience in the development. If done right, software Our focus is on enabling software requirements of software vendors in integration can offer a substantial vendors to meet their users’ integration this regard. Through leveraging low- reduction in technological resources to needs more easily and directly. This is code technologies, the integration deliver agile software development. called Embedded iPaaS, and there are creation process no longer has to be very few companies with the purity of solely a developer’s responsibility, and The iPaas arena is often overlooked focus Cyclr has in this area. the organization as a whole can due to the complexity of its nature become more agile. among the non-tech-savvy audience. Integrations are commercially critical However, this remains one of the most to software vendors; however, the technically challenging spaces in the creation of extensive connectivity software development arena. options can be a time-consuming task www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 22

25. The Embedded Integration Marketplace simplifies deployment, as well as enables teams to directly push new integrations live without touching their codebase. Fraser Davidson CEO Cyclr www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 23

26. What other products/solutions does Being an experienced leader, share That being said, there is a clear your company offer, and how are with us your opinion on what impact opportunity for AI/ML in the future to these making an impact on the has the adoption of modern ease the process of creating industry and your clients? technologies such as AI and machine integrations - although the jury is out learning had on the data integration whether the process could ever be As well as the ability to build solutions niche and what more could completely automated. We watch the integrations with low-code drag and be expected in the future? AI landscape with interest. drop tools, Cyclr has gone a step further to enable the publishing of Whilst AI and machine learning are It is fair to say that a different angle is in-app integrations using our fantastic tools for managing and that integration is key to feeding these white-labelled marketplace tools. The distilling significance from large data AIs and computer models with data, as Embedded Integration Marketplace sets, integration is still fundamentally well as sending their results to the simplifies deployment, as well as focused on creating reliable and appropriate system. enables teams to directly push new scalable connections between disparate integrations live without touching their systems. Integrations tend to be Taking into consideration the codebase. This added agility allows relatively bespoke/custom to software current pandemic, what initial vendors and their client requirements software vendors to react to customer challenges did you face, and how did requests faster than ever before, and are developed based upon a you drive your company to sustain without needing to schedule time into defined customer need. AI does not yet operations while ensuring the safety their development sprints. play a role in integration/automation of your employees at the same time? creation as it still relies heavily on human interpretation of individual We were in the privileged position of clients’ needs. being a predominantly remote business www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 24

27. success of your business, rather it will be how you handle the edge cases and inevitable complexities that arise when dealing with disparate uses of data and customer requirements. That being said, you still need to be able to make this complexity simple. All in all, the data integration market is an exciting market going through some substantial transformation. There is ample opportunity for many clever iPaaS companies to co-exist. Go for it! How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in the future? Today we are a predominantly UK based business with 95%+ of the team directly employed here in England. However, our client base is a large majority international. We are inevitably going to begin opening international offices to have local talent on the ground in key markets - both prior to the pandemic. As a result, the of our team that joined during the technical and commercial resources. transition/adjustment was not as great pandemic to gradually meetup (as and as it could otherwise have been. when they are comfortable) to deepen We will continue to incorporate our their bonds with their peers. Coming client feedback into the innovation and The shift of having all (rather than out of the pandemic, we have adaptation of our Embedded iPaaS most) meetings on Zoom was maintained our policy of flexible platform functionality. Our product relatively smooth. We increased the working and have allowed employees direction is heavily determined by the cadence of our team meetings, and we to self-determine the extent to which needs of our customers. made sure to have regular team virtual they intermingle and venture into our meetups to make sure we could retain office spaces. some of the cultures we had developed, Exhibiting Excellence especially as our team began to grow We have adapted our offices to Ÿ “One of the things we liked about with new starters joining regularly. completely ‘hot desk’ environments Cyclr was the fact that it has been and have located them closer to built as a native [embedded] Keeping the team engaged and stations to enable ease of travel as and iPaaS solution.” informed was critical, and we doubled when required. - Chargify down on our efforts in this area. Team members were encouraged to put their What would be your advice to Ÿ “Working with Cyclr has been personal needs ahead of those of the budding entrepreneurs who aspire to great. From the initial onboarding process, I could pitch business, and we endeavoured to be as venture into the data integration it to Josh, the owner, and explain responsive and supportive as any solutions market? what Cyclr is going to do for us. I employer could be, given the love working with you guys, circumstances. Don’t underestimate the complexity of always super helpful, and the the solution you will need to deliver. It support is great.” As things have begun to open up more, is not the day-to-day A <> B - Drive Social Media we are now focused on getting the 50% integrations that will determine the www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 25

30. Data Integration andCloud Accessibility he accessibility of data has been compared with the way electricity or water has been made accessible. T T The use of technology has kept humankind all st connected in the 21 century. Despite the existing beliefs that we are the ones running technology, it is rather the opposite. In several domains of our lives, from education to the aviation industry, technology is used to transfer data and make its best possible use to our advantage. From Google, YouTube to Email and Siri, the use of technology undeniably entertains an exchange of data in order to establish a connection between user and computer. Several large businesses and industries took the support of data in order to make decisions during the post-pandemic situation, which led to short- and long-term impacts on their success. It was a reality check for the businesses, which encouraged them to reconsider their use of technology to respond adaptively. Opportunities such as sudden lockdowns and measures of social distancing developed a stronger reliance on data integration. It offered the companies with a hope that it could not only meet the communication requirements of the modern world but also be effective in serving the expected challenges with potential solutions of the upcoming future. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 28

31. ModernTech Maintaining Connectivity amongst Systems Developing the Future of IT Infrastructure Businesses post COVID-19 era conducted a recovery plan Businesses that have enabled virtual modes of operating are where the priority was to refocus their digital efforts in rethinking the future of technological infrastructure that alignment with customer and employees’ expectations. For could support them in seeking a competitive advantage. instance, a retail store suddenly had to switch to an online According to Deloitte Insights, Microsoft has pointed out market website within three months. Such a transformation that two years of growth have taken in two months, with would require the retail business to collect data from its 59% of companies already having switched to cloud other aspects, such as merchandising, customer support, and initiatives. even suppliers. While it could be an effortful attempt to completely The recovery phase was attended to by the support of data transform businesses using a cloud computing approach, integration mechanisms where businesses could improve companies are initiating their steps by taking people, their operations and bind several dimensions together, such operational tools, and approaches into consideration. They as from billing to the E-commerce journey of customers. It can ignite a cloud-computing business model by developing could offer them a level of connectivity to further establish a change plan that involves renewing existing strategies, a full picture of their business, identify gaps, recognize training employees, and mitigating the risks of barriers and attend to challenges with greater efficiency. incorporating cloud computing onto its everyday functioning. Around 87% of the IT decision-makers predict A Solution for Remote and Hybrid Workers that by the year 2025, organizations will have completely transformed to the cloud. Such an infrastructure would process with an enhanced digital resiliency towards The post COVID-19 era had encouraged businesses to upcoming challenges and improved security towards the switch to hybrid or remote working models for their employees. As per a survey by Pew Research Centre, exchange of data. approximately 61% of the employees prefer to working from home. The businesses have also been able to perceive Concluding Note an increase in productivity amongst remote workers, based on which they aim to incorporate and sustain remote Although cloud computing has been a primary response to working models. recovery from the COVID-19 impact, it is yet to bring about a permanent shift into the existence of business When it comes to switching to remote or hybrid working working models, further lowering security risks and models, companies are concerned about certain aspects resulting in improved operational efficiency. It is possible such as failure to protect against security risks, the digital that in the coming times, the business world will be in a divide between employees, or inefficient collaboration better position to engage in smooth workflow, regulatory towards work. However, companies around the globe have operations, and organizational interactions regardless of the taken the support of public cloud computing technology mode of work that businesses opt for. which has made it possible to allow access to remote working and hybrid working systems while eliminating - Prashik Bombarde their primary concerns. There is a strategic shift in the level of investments companies are making toward cloud computing that allows them to offer a secure and consistent experience for their employees. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 29

32. World’s 10 Best Data Integra?on Solu?on Provides 2022 elastic.io he market for Integration Platform-as-a-Service complex piece of integration architecture that enables rapid, (iPaaS) is booming and is expected to grow event-driven data synchronization between multiple exponentially in the coming years. This rapidly systems of record for 360° customer view was built and T developing industry offers enterprises an opportunity to maintained by just a few members of the company's IT increase their agility by integrating new technologies into Team. their existing enterprise architecture. Our iPaaS is designed to help IT specialists – both The demand for iPaaS solutions has been rising in a integration experts as well as ad hoc developers – spend plethora of industries including healthcare, finance, retail/e- less time with data sync, data transformation, and data commerce and more. This evidently shows the need for migration in a variety of scenarios such as API integration, proficient iPaaS solution providers who can cater to the application integration, B2B and IoT integration. In fewer needs of these diverse industries. In our quest to find such words, we simplify and accelerate creation and companies through this edition, World's 10 Best Data management of integrations. Integration Solution Providers 2021, we came across elastic.io, an industry-first microservices-based hybrid What other solutions does your company offer, and how iPaaS platform that empowers IT organizations to are these making an impact on the industry and your accelerate enterprise digital transformation. clients? In the following interview, Dr Kevin J Mobbs, the In addition to our enterprise suite, we offer the elastic.io Managing Director, sheds light on the company's journey integration platform as white label. More and more SaaS so far, its cutting-edge solutions, and their impact on vendors have come to realize that nowadays, it's not enough industry and clients. to build a great product. While it's flattering to think that your product is the solution to a client's problem, it is only Please brief our audience about your company, its USPs, truly effective when it can exchange data with related and how it is currently positioned as a leading player in software applications. the data integration solutions niche. The real game-changer is the ability of a SaaS solution to fit elastic.io is an integration service provider platform with seamlessly into the IT landscape of potential clients, so that headquarters in Germany. We like to think of our product as a proper data exchange and synchronization are enabled 'the only low-code iPaaS you'll ever need.' It combines the right from the start. When this happens, value of SaaS tools and features necessary to address the complexity of offering increases dramatically and SaaS vendors who real-world enterprise integration scenarios, with an easy-to- embed into client ecosystems, experience much lower churn use graphical user interface. rates. A great example of this combination was demonstrated by An elastic.io offering that helps such SaaS vendors get a one of our recent customers, Krombacher brewery: A very head start is our software developer kit. This enables any www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 30

33. Dr Kevin J Mobbs Managing Director elas?c.io www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 31

34. bioinformatics and systems biology while struggling to perform DNA sequence analysis on my own experimental data. Despite these experiences, I will never be a competent software engineer. What I have learned through my career in biomedical research, biotech product management, and innovation consulting, is to focus on understanding customers and users – their wants, needs, problems, and pain points. If you do a good job on this, I believe the technology stack discussions become much more focused, and the risks of developing irrelevant features reduces. Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion on what impact has the adoption of modern technologies such as AI and machine learning had on the data integration solutions niche and what more could be expected in the future? AI and machine learning are quite hyped terms, but the exponential reduction in cost of computing power has opened the possibility of processing huge data sets. user to create new integration connectors for their own Approaches I observed in other industries, such as SaaS offering or any other. Paired with our collection of combinatorial data analysis and computational chemistry in more generic connectors for SOAP, JDBC, Webhook, or drug discovery, were akin to the early neural net methods – REST API integrations, these free our users to create essentially trial and error at scale. integrations with almost any modern application or API. The state of the art these days seems more refined and is There are of course clients who have no IT-team, or simply focused not just on the volume data but instead, the variety no time, to create integrations or connectors. These clients and dynamism of data sets used. The pharmaceutical used to be small to mid-sized enterprises. But nowadays, companies all have big data initiatives and Data42 at there is a clear trend towards line-of-business responsibility Novartis is a good example that initiative isn't just about for integrations, meaning that even the units within large collecting the medical research studies and clinical trial multi-nationals, struggle to access and maintain IT data, it's about combining these with valuable contextual resources. For these customers, we have a full-service information; so that real insights and value can be mined offering using our Professional Services Team. They can and then applied to multiple use cases and industries. create integration flows or new connectors for clients. So, how do companies looking for a competitive edge, Dr Kevin, please brief us about your journey in the access enough data from various sources to derive real industry, and how you have contributed towards the value? I believe that integration of both enterprise and company's success. external systems is the answer, and making integrations as easy, yet powerful, as possible. Nothing slows AI & ML Like many other people my age, I was lucky enough to better than poor data quality, so you need to be sure you can witness the explosion of personal computing technology groom and transform data 'on the fly' as it flows. that happened in the early 80's. I learned rudimentary basic at school and even though the Sinclair ZX80 had Our parent company Cogia AG has a set of interesting AI- limitations—check out the keyboard and massive 1KB of driven technologies for customer and employee experience memory—the logic and discipline of creating small routines management. These approaches combine traditional was fascinating to me. Likewise, at university where I engagement markers with sentiment analysis of public studied Microbiology, I witnessed the start of domain content such as social media. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 32

35. In this way, linking product data (ERP), customer have considered 'make vs buy' and most choose 'buy'. information (CRM), and HR systems with social media Developing and maintaining a platform requires a lot of analysis provide companies with awesome insights; resources to ensure you have either very deep pockets or an enabling them to better understand and protect brand equity, innovative niche application. And that brings me to the 'F' customer engagement, and employee motivation. So, I see word – FOCUS. integration as key to enabling AI and ML approaches to further bloom. Having a small set of deep features that are laser-targeted at specific customer needs is likely to be much more exciting Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what to early adopters, and easier to sell than a broad set of initial challenges did you face and how did you drive functions or 'performance features.' Maintaining customer your company to sustain operations while ensuring focus is much easier said than done, especially when safety of your employees at the same time? customer visits are more difficult. Nevertheless, do whatever you can to never lose touch with customers – they At the beginning, we had concerns about a few running probably understand your product better than you do! projects, because the clients were from the sectors that were hit the hardest. Some of those projects were indeed put on a How do you envision scaling your company's operations hold or even abandoned at a later point in time. In general, and offerings in the future? we've observed that companies became more cautious about investments and long-term commitments. But on the other The major boost to our scalability is our recent acquisition hand, with everyone working from their homes, the need by Cogia AG. Combining development, operations and for digitalization of business processes increased marketing resources plus benefiting from the international dramatically and so did the need for data synchronization. sales footprint of Cogia and the synergies between our products, will boost our growth. On the technology side, we are following 2 broad paths. So, in this respect, the pandemic served, in fact, as a boost for the data integration solutions market. Having a young and largely virtual team, it didn't take us as an organization The first is automation, not just for development, testing, too long to adjust. I guess, the biggest task was to help and operations but also for users. The second is ease of use maintain team morale, but we learned to do that through – integrations and data transformations are complex, and more frequent video calls and ensuring everyone had the the integration scenarios are endless – we have built our flexibility they needed in their working environment, to platform to address this complexity and that sometimes was cope with the demands of caring for family and friends at the expense of an intuitive user experience. We have a through the pandemic. I think the pandemic has helped us bunch of cool stuff in our backlog, much inspired by our all appreciate the important things in life. innovative customers and their insights, so watch this space! What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the data integration solutions Exhibiting Excellence market? "elastic.io enabled us to migrate the existing customer base The data integration solutions market is clearly growing from one system to Salesforce and Exponea without the now at a faster pace than anticipated. This is not only due to need to have a heavy switch over. It was more like a smooth the pandemic forcing companies to accelerate the digital switch because we were able to listen on updates/deletes." – transformation, but also in general due to the rise of SaaS. Christian Dröge, Senior Software Architect. The replacement of older, server-bound software solutions with more modular, user-friendly, and flexible SaaS "A modern architecture strategy is based on the API-centric solutions means customers need to connect these disparate approach for implementing various established and proven systems, somehow if they want to become truly data driven. principles of enterprise integration patterns. For me, this was one of the reasons why I chose iPaaS." – Anonymous So, if there is a right time to enter the data integration representative of our client from the education sector. solutions market – it might be now. However, be aware that many large companies looking to use integration platforms www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 33

36. AIOps and the Future of the IT Space hile sailing, the self-affirmation to reach the underlying issues in IT businesses. Its intelligent analytics shore takes dedication and discipline. While capabilities also provide predictive business insight in W W finding the measures to find a path, we are numerous forms and across various business operations. adhered to rely on a compass. Compassing the way in, it is essential to resurface the sources that help meet the end AIOps have nourished the increasing complexity of IT product. systems, the rapid growth of organizational data, and frequent industry upheavals, such as remote work, new In the world of advanced technology, analytical platforms technological trends, constantly changing markets, etc. are dependent upon organizational agendas. While understanding the complexities of IT systems, industry Transforming IT Operations disruptions, technological trends, and changing markets, it is essential to prioritize the subject. While understanding the parameters of the industrial revolution, it has been mandated that obtaining various To solve industrial needs, aid remediation in various technological tools to make businesses lively has been the instances, and automate the response, AIOps began to primary goal. While considering AIOps to be the game facilitate precise and quick process automation across the changer for the face of IT operations, it is necessary to business model of the IT sector. understand how it is impacting the business culture. The sources that exclusively assist disruptions and market Below are the highlights: changes in the industrial movement is solved through AIOps that assist in recurring system problem, Cloud-Native Architecture organizational challenges, and automated processes. More corporate enterprises, even SMEs, are using cloud- While moving along the longing processes, it is essential to native architecture to create and deliver apps quickly. understand the functionalities and critical uses of AIOps: However, maintaining security, governance, better and faster incident handling, and server uptime remains an AIOps issue. In the process, the cloud-native environments go through various problems such as alerts for operations, AIOps is an industry that employs AI and ML analytics to complex deployments, complex root cause analysis, manual automate, streamline, and improve IT operations analytics. remediation, and lack of visibility. AIOps tend to enable real-time comprehension of any www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 34

37. The Next Step AIOps leverages the power of AI and ML to assist in Financial Environment overcoming these difficulties and provide incredibly data- driven and actionable insights to alleviate the pain points Financial institutions may use AIOps to collect the relevant associated with a lack of visibility. consumer data to drive more focused marketing and business development efforts. Additionally, previous It is reliable to automate issue reporting and remediation, customer data may be evaluated to produce more accurate depending on your company model. Another advantage is projections for revenue growth and market trends. AIOps’ capacity to delve deep into data containers and siloed data units to determine the root causes of issues, such AI-enabled governance and event monitoring can help as continuous deployment failures or crashes. AIOps assure improved regulatory compliance and data security. Finally, financial institutions may obtain a Digital Regeneration framework for integrating and utilizing multiple complicated data sets for blockchain deployment, NFT, and other purposes. AIOps with highly advanced innovative capabilities play a critical role in digital transformation, digital operation management, and disruption in various businesses and Capacity for Incident Management industries. AIOps may improve incident management skills in IT AI and machine learning are crucial in performance data businesses in a variety of ways, including: analysis and uncovering hidden patterns in data. As a result, teams may delve deeper into multiple data containers and • Identifying the precise core causes of various crises and obtain actionable insights that are incredibly dependable occurrences and not susceptible to data breakdowns caused by siloed • Developing a unified picture of organizational alert data data. • Creating, administering, and automating the incident register for the organization Finally, AIOps may identify redundant procedures that can • Assigning duties for incident monitoring and resolution to be automated to increase workplace productivity, efficiency, multiple people and overall employee happiness. As AIOps include NLP and predictive analytics, they may Enhance Decision making in DevOps pave the way for highly coordinated issue management and incident response strategies for enterprises of all sizes and DevOps’ essence is fast application delivery, which renders scales. it subject to security flaws that are not discovered until the application is fully completed. However, testing each Closing Ceremony module would slow development and make the overall growth and testing process more difficult. While understanding an organization’s core values, it is mandatory to get hold of the automation of AIOps for the So AIOps has taken a step forward to resolve! productivity of the infrastructural complications. In the process of enhancing the overall experience for a positive AIOps can provide continuous data streams for operations outcome, it is essential to drive a firm to Artificial such as anomaly detection, causality prediction, pattern Intelligence Operatives cases to develop and maintain the recognition, etc. It can also conveniently handle event advocacy. correlation and root cause analysis to enable better and - Prashik Bombarde more accurate testing. As a result, AIOps is poised to transform the way we know and comprehend deployment, monitoring, and application support in DevOps. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 35

38. World’s 10 Best Data Integra?on Solu?on Provides 2022 Etlworks Providing Fundamental Data Integration Solutions ata integration is the fuel of Please brief our audience about support, which is one of our the modern world of AI. The Etlworks, its USPs, and how it is competitive advantages in this crowded D data integration solutions are currently positioned as a leading market. essential for gaining a holistic player in the data integration perspective on business operations, solutions niche. What other products does your supply chains, modeling R&D budgets, company offer, and how are these and many other commercial purposes. Etlworks was founded in 2016 by making an impact on the industry Data integration solutions are quickly Maksym Sherbinin and Artem Avdonin and your clients? becoming the need of the hour for all with a focus on user-friendly cloud businesses as AI promises major data integration. We developed an We focus on data integration. Our main research outbreaks. MVP in 6 months, went to the market product is Etlworks Integrator which is shortly after that, and had three paying a cloud-native data integration For example, in the pharmaceutical customers by the year-end. I used my platform that works equally well in the sector, AI and machine learning have contacts from the time when I worked cloud and on-premises. We also offer discovered the main causes of chronic as a freelance consulter to score first Data Integration Agent, which is our illnesses like cancer, HIV, Alzheimer’s, customers. data integration engine repackaged as a among others, at a fraction of the cost headless app installed as a service or of human input. Furthermore, the Currently, we offer cloud and Docker container. It typically runs technology has advanced the pace of on-premises data integration software behind the company's firewall and does discoveries in clinical research and a as a service (SaaS) for enterprises of not require any administration or host of other industries. all sizes and verticals. Our typical maintenance. customer is looking to accelerate its The data integration solutions also transition to the cloud and needs a fast, Etlworks Integrator and Integration promise tremendous cost-savings, reliable, and easy to use solution which Agent can work together, easy-to-use operation handling works equally well with the data in the communicating via the REST API. software, and insights in real-time. One cloud and on-premises. This is our answer to hybrid data of the companies that are changing the integration when companies need to outlook of global data integration We help with rapid data movements, run synchronized data integration solutions is Etlworks. data collection, and API integration. workloads on-premises and in the Etlworks solves fundamental data cloud. In the following interview, Maksym integration problems: from real-time Sherbinin, CEO, Etlworks, shares data streaming and CDC (change data with us in detail about the company’s capture) to batch processing billions of journey in the data integration space rows of data and to work with and his outlook on the commercial well-known and custom APIs. We do arena. have the best-in-class customer www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 36

39. Maksym, please brief us about yourself, your journey in the industry, and how you have contributed to the company's success. I’m a co-founder and CEO of Etlworks. I was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and moved to the US in 2000. I worked as a developer, freelance consultant, Maksym Sherbinin technical lead, chief architect, and VP CEO of engineering for companies such as Etlworks i2, McKesson, and SCA before co- founding Etlworks in 2016 with my partner Artem. During my tenure as a freelance consultant, I have created a data integration engine that is currently used by Bank of New Zeeland, Marketo Australia, Cerebral Palsy Association, Asus USA, and many The Etlworks other companies around the globe. Integrator is a Later this engine became a core of the Etlworks Integrator. cloud-native data integration platform As a CEO of Etlworks, I’m responsible for the company’s vision, strategy, and that works equally ultimately success. I continue to well in the cloud and contribute to the development of our data integration engine. I live in on-premises. Pittsburgh, PA, with my wife Olena, younger son Andrew, and a six-year- old Golden Retriever Simba. Our older user-friendly, memory and CPU for various vertical domains such as son Artem is a graduate of the US efficient, take advantage of modern healthcare, finances, manufacturing, Naval Academy. He currently serves as parallel architectures, support real-time marketing, etc. The plan is to integrate an officer in the US Navy. data integration techniques such as it with our platform but also offer it as CDC, and much more. a paid service to other vendors. Being an experienced leader, share The true adoption of machine learning with us your opinion on the impact and AI in our field has been rather Considering the current pandemic, the adoption of modern technologies slow, which I'm okay with. You got to what initial challenges did you face, such as AI and machine learning had have basics taken care of first. The one and how did you drive your on the niche of data integration area where we see a potential for AI company to sustain operations while solutions, and what more could be ensuring the safety of your adoption is intelligent data mapping. expected in the future? employees at the same time? We started a project with a group of Modern data integration is on the Just like everyone else, we were CMU students that will [eventually] cutting edge of software engineering initially stunned by the prospects of a allow us to offer automatic data craft. To successfully compete, your mapping (driven by machine learning) solution must be super-fast, reliable, www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 37

40. real-time to a variety of destinations. It also had to be flexible enough to handle a multitude of curveballs in a straightforward way. After evaluating virtually each of ETLWorks’ competitors, it became increasingly clear that their solution had everything that I needed while maintaining a reasonable price point.” “Beyond that, their technical support, both during the sales process and the following was unparalleled. They have consistently responded to any inquiry or question with nearly no lag time and have been immensely helpful. In the rare event that I run into a software defect (even if it's not in their software) collapsing economy, friends and family Become (or hire) an actual industry or require a new feature to getting sick and overall uncertainty. We expert, and do not be afraid of accommodate my workflow, it has have been working from home even competitors. Don't pitch your business consistently been delivered in a matter before the pandemic, and our entire as "the same as Informatica but in the of days (or less).” infrastructure is in the cloud, so our cloud and with AI." Your goal is to operations were not affected. However, make your customers happy. Get to the “In my experience as a CTO, I've we do have customers in 25 countries, market as soon as possible but don't worked with a large number of so we were surely affected by what is release a product that doesn't work as vendors, and ETLWorks is without a going on with the global economy. advertised. Focus on a few key doubt in the top tier. Beyond the features/use cases and do them right phenomenal support, the application A small number of our customers the first time. itself has worked great, and I couldn't reached out to us and asked for deep recommend it any more highly.” discounts, which we provided, no How do you envision scaling your – Chris Furlong. CTO, Anduin tech.” questions asked. What happened next company’s operations and offerings was a big surprise. Our revenue has in the future? “I honestly feel like I'm working with tripled in the following year and a half, another developer on my team when and the number of customers grew by We will continue to grow by at least I'm speaking to them. Communication 150%. I attribute this to the accelerated 70% year over year in the next couple is direct and instant; they have been migration of the infrastructure, of years. The goal is to become so proactive in investigating our setup and workloads, and data to the cloud. good (and reasonably big) that no one adjusting their code to accommodate can ignore us. We will do this by our scenarios. They added a bunch of I think we were (are) in the right place investing in the right people and features for us and gave us step-by-step at the right time. The fact that our price technologies and improving our directions on how to use is competitive, and our product and already superb customer support. We undocumented features when I needed support are awesome helps a lot. The are open to a strategic partnership but to do very advanced stuff.” fact that our price is competitive, and raising the capital is not our highest our product and support are awesome, priority. We are profitable and feel “What I love best is when I ask them a helps a lot. comfortable in terms of the cash flow. question or identify an issue; they are always on my level and understand What would be your advice to Demonstrating Brilliance what I'm talking about. There’s no budding entrepreneurs who aspire to back and forth or explaining.” – Bryan venture into the data integration “I needed a solution that facilitated Meyerovich. Sr. Software Engineer, solutions market? streaming database changes in near Sermo. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 38

42. World’s 10 Best Data Integra?on Solu?on Provides 2022 Enabling Businesses Make Effortless Data Migration n this era, where technology is evolving at a pace faster Relokia’s services cover those and many other business than it was ever imaginable, corporations must adapt to cases automatedly. So, our clients don’t have to be data I and inculcate new software to their existing setup to experts or software engineers to fix their data migration enhance their business processes and get quicker outcomes. issues. The biggest challenge that surfaces while making an Quickly building a competitive advantage and efficiently addition of a new application to the setup or transitioning to managing a business isn’t that easy in any data-related a new application is the moving of data between apps niche. Thus, our team keeps on improving the quality of the safely, hassle-free, and with optimum security. This is services, gaining customer loyalty, and growing our where Relokia comes into the picture. credibility. Relokia is a company based out of Ternopil, Ukraine, that If you check G2 for Cloud Migration Software, our Help excels in providing a safe, secure, and easy platform for Desk Migration Services holds 3rd place. Good results, but companies to migrate, control, and backup their data on we’re striving for higher. multiple applications. What other products/solutions does Relokia offer, and In the following interview, Maxim Orlovsky, the CEO how are these making an impact on the industry and shares the company’s journey since inception, the your clients? challenges they came across, and his vision for scaling Relokia’s operations and offerings in the future. A few years ago, we successfully launched a help desk migration project. It turned out to be a niche solution that Please brief our audience about Relokia, its USPs, and deals with record switch, importing, and exporting among how it is currently positioned as a leading player in the help desk software. data integration solutions niche. Help Desk Migration is a different API-based way to get Data means many different things to many different your business data to nearly any help desk solution from businesses. Today, data is seen as one of the biggest values another system, CSV file, or database dump. out there. Relokia is a platform that helps businesses to deal with a wide swath of data issues. The automated migration service brings value to companies that use help desk systems - just check up our G2 profile Let’s say your company undergoes a digital transformation, page for reviews - and vendors too. We have built business scaling, or strategy upgrade, and you are quite partnerships with several vendors - to name a few: Zendesk, prone to face Help Scout, Freshdesk, Helpdesk, Freshservice, Kayako, Teamwork Desk, and many others. • switching data among business solutions • merging several help desk instances Developing Help Desk Migration has been quite a journey • importing databases to help desk systems to improve for us, and we keep improving our features to meet the API analytics• records exporting and backup from business changes and customer needs. Relokia’s team got inspired, tools and we started a couple of new projects that would let us www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 40

43. , , Developing Help Desk Migration has been quite a journey for us, and we keep improving our features to meet the API changes and customer needs. Maxim Orlovsky CEO Relokia

44. move data between project management, accounting conversion rates. Basically, the faster their clients get on the management, human resource management, and learning platform, the more chances that they stay with them. New management software. customers’ implementation and onboarding process are essential for any SaaS product, and Relokia helps speed it Everyone wants to get what they paid for. With that in up. mind, we develop our services to meet the nagging problems and real-time data migration needs the business Maxim, please brief us about your journey in the has. industry and how you have contributed to the company’s success. Relokia and the services we offer aim to Relokia started like a small project. In the beginning, there • show business owners - their data isn’t locked in one were only three people who had experience in a) the key system, and they can move it automatedly and securely business areas and b) the data migration industry. So, I am a • improve the way records switch, import, or export Product Manager, Yuriy Kril is a Software Developer, and between business platforms Dima Lazarchuk is a Marketer. What impact on the industry we have? Well, it is two- The idea came from the simple observation of the brutal fold: we bring benefits for companies and software vendors. truth: moving data between software costs companies piles of money and time. They have to spend time searching the So, for companies that migrate: They get to a new platform outsourcing agency or creating a custom app to switch and keep on working without downtimes or long breaks. records on their own. Then went a data switch itself and The old approaches and methods took them weeks to move synchronization records that brought downtimes of support their records, with our services it is done within hours or a service and disappointed customers who waited too long for couple of days - depending on the amount of data. responses. For vendors: We help vendors get more users aboard. But we knew it could go the other way – less costly but Besides, their sales cycles got improved along with more convenient and efficient. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 42

45. The lots of brainstorming sessions, roadmap building, So, in the nearest future, businesses will need to re-evaluate market research, service core development, customer and analyze their settings to their algorithms, evaluate interviews, functions, mock-ups, brand strategy, and many operational complexity and the impact of the outcomes, and other things should be planned and done by our small team. their governance capabilities. And another focus area includes requirements such as So how was it? • The technical development and security aspects were • set up a standard for their transparency on Yuriy Kril. • control AI evolving within their company • The marketing and sales were on Dima Lazarchuk. • manage the interaction between AI and humans • The UX/UI, core strategy and entrepreneur legitimacy were on me. Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive Each of us has a core focus area, but we took part in every Relokia to sustain operations while ensuring the safety process and suggested ideas. That’s how the team works. of your employees at the same time? There wasn’t such a thing as an overnight miracle, Pandemic became a brand-new challenge for the company. Relokia’s co-founders went through thick and thin, and now It turned our work, routines, and world perception upside we’re here - running a data service platform. And we gather down. There was no playbook on how to deal with it and around us young people who are inspired to reach more and how to manage your business. So once the lockdown was learn more. lifted, we switched to work from home. Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion Our policies allowed employees to work remotely for a on what impact has the adoption of modern technologies certain period from home, so the workflow and security such as AI and machine learning had on the data aspects were appropriately covered. No one knew how long integration solutions niche and what more could be the pandemic would last and how social distancing expected in the future? impacted team engagement and performance. Many of us found ourselves working longer from home than it was The adoption of AI and machine learning in one way or from the office. So, our challenges were: another is inevitable, so businesses better get prepared for that. Overtime brings less value in the long run. That’s why we have a few meets on time In the last five years or so, we’ve heard many concerns management. And try to share the best performing tips on about the digital technologies that will abuse personal data. planning a workday from home. It was kind of creepy that companies could track their movement, collect their credit card numbers, followed by Team motivation means a lot for business and employee the ads online, addresses, and other information. And success. We introduced an online round table once a week companies keep actively applying artificial intelligence to for small talk and run retrospective meetings biweekly. their services, business processes, and decision-making. The question here is what software does with that data. Attention to health at this uncertain time is of urgent That’s why the GDPR in 2018 and CCPA in 2020 appeared importance. Remote fitness challenge becomes a good to give internet users control over their personal data and solution. It was simple: Google sheet with employees who images. took part in exercises and points one earned during a month. Employees would do exercise and track their points. What is the main problem with AI and machine learning in And, yes, we had a small money remuneration for a winner. data integration or processing? Well, I think it’s the biased It performed great. outcomes (e.g., Apple’s credit card algorithm or Amazon’s automated resume screener) that software may provide due When our location entered the green zone and working to misapplied or misconfigured AI. The algorithms enhance from the office was allowed, we switched to a hybrid our life, no doubt here. But they might defy straightforward schedule. Those who got bored at home could go to the explanations while changing and adapting to the received office, and others could work from home further. data. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 43

46. Demonstrating Excellence Jani Timonen – “Service which Relokia provides - data migration from one helpdesk to another - was a lifesaver for us! We had a very extended ticket base and a very old and exotic helpdesk - old standalone Kayako. Relokia team has managed to seamlessly migrate our tickets and customers allowing us to move forward with our helpdesk evolution but also keep a track of a history of our interactions. Relokia's expertise is much wider than just a migration. We receive plenty of valuable inputs and advice. The team is very professional, proactive, customer-oriented, and skillful. Wholeheartedly recommend for any projects within your helpdesk!” Brian Williams – “I hate migrations. So many unexpected twists and turns. Hiccups you didn't expect. This was not my first rodeo. Before starting the migration, I asked how long it would take to migrate and the estimate was 4hrs. Well, that proved to be not accurate at all. After starting it at night and thinking I would wake up to a completed migration. Far from it. Thanks to Kristina being on chat I was able to get updates (beyond the thermometer display) which put me at ease. And, when in the middle of the process we hit an error, she was there (with the dev team) to fix the issue and get me back on track. Having that feeling that someone has my back was priceless. Highly Recommend.” Rose Gillian – “Great resource – we migrated 13,000 Zendesk tickets into JSM. The data was perfect and saved us a ton of time and energy. Getting the attachments and all the comments were key and this product was delivered. The support team is excellent and while we had a slight issue, they were on it, and we had no data loss. Highly recommend and the price is hard to beat.” The sanitizer, disposable masks, social distancing, cleaning, Be in the know and track the industry trends. and appropriate ventilation system were implemented and improved in our office. Also, we practice as much work How do you envision scaling your company’s operations from home as possible. That’s a basic thing we adopted and offerings in the future? once the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Ukraine. Relokia keeps evolving, and we plan to improve our switch, What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs import, and export service capabilities within project who aspire to venture into the data integration solutions management, accounting management, human resource market? management, and learning management software. That’s a lot of work to do, but our team is ready to take on these Everyone wants to know what the secret to a successful challenges. business venture is. And those who succeeded have their own answers that vary heavily. I can share some treatment options, but you should look for a cure yourself. My to-go tips for budding entrepreneurs are the following: Be courageous to fail. Try as many times as you need. Build a product that solves real business problems, not only the buyer persona’s assumptions. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 44

48. World’s 10 Best Data Integra?on Solu?on Provides 2022 couple of decades ago, when CEO of SyncSpider, shared his It lets you connect your favourite the digitalization process was company's journey, its experiences, and e-commerce apps to work in sync and A taking baby steps, an entirely future perspectives in the online build your ideal workflow. No more new sector was evolving business sector. time and resources are lost on synchronizing never-ending data simultaneously – e-commerce. Who would have thought that e-commerce Please brief our audience about between multiple platforms. would be the new normal in the retail SyncSpider, its USPs, and its position sector? But e-commerce evolved from as a leading player in the data Today, we pride ourselves in building a being just a mere new idea to an rock-solid platform that helps integration solutions niche. industry that is dominating the world thousands of e-commerce owners earn today. SyncSpider is an more by doing less. Or, in our words: application-to-application integration work it smarter, sync it better, ship it Within a few years, this e-commerce tool designed to help eCommerce faster, sell it stronger. sector overlapped traditional businesses grow revenue using marketing, indicating where the retail multichannel sales automation. What other products/solutions does sector's future lies. In 2007, e- Practically, it helps manage stock in a SyncSpider offer, and how are these commerce had accounted for 5.1% of centralized place, connect with making an impact on the industry online retail sales and raised to 16% till eCommerce tools to sync data, and and your clients? 2019. ultimately create an improved buying Simply put, SyncSpider operates like a experience for customers. The widespread use of online plat- centralized nervous system. We help e- forms such as Amazon or eBay Our mission is to help e-commerce commerce businesses integrate and resulted in substantial growth in the businesses achieve exponential growth. synchronize their favourite tech stack online retail sector. But with the course Nowadays, every e-commerce business into one platform. Once you connect of time, it became difficult to manage relies on using a set of complementary your favourite apps together, SyncSpider automates the transfer of the businesses online, as they didn't marketing apps to better study want to spend their valuable time and analytics, interpret data, and create a data and execution of repetitive tasks money on repetitive tasks. This created flawless customer experience. This so you can focus on conquering new the necessity for software that will conventional approach can sometimes marketplaces and winning customers. manage and optimize the e-commerce be inefficient, time-consuming, and business efficiently. fruitless. E-commerce businesses are Essentially, SyncSpider is an ideal platform for medium to large size losing copious hours on repetitive tasks Looking to fill this gap, a company was and manual data synchronization webshops and e-commerce agencies established – SyncSpider. SyncSpider that are managing a lot of clients. Our between multiple platforms. provides a cloud-based multichannel recent study showed that some of our Running a successful business online agency partners have seen up to 80 integration tool that helps online retailers to grow revenue. demands keeping in touch with the hours a week saved with the automation and workflows they've set latest technological advancements such In an interview with Insights Success, as data integration solutions. Well, up for their clients. SyncSpider fits them all into one place. Norbert Strappler, the Founder and www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 46

49. Norbert Strappler Founder and CEO SyncSpider GmbH We pride ourselves in building a rock-solid platform that helps thousands of e-commerce owners earn more by doing less. About the Leader Working with hundreds of development and initial feedback, The founder and CEO of e-commerce clients in a dozen SyncSpider went live for the first SyncSpider is Norbert Strappler. years, Norbert and his team time in 2018 as the first universal Norbert has been in the e- became masters at their craft. E-commerce middleware. commerce industry for almost 17 Apart from being involved in the years. An ambitious entrepreneur daily operations of his agency, Norbert's long-lasting at heart, he has launched several Norbert is a regular speaker and relationships in the e-commerce companies in the digital guest at e-commerce industry proved to be crucial for marketing realm. At the present conferences, workshops, and the formidable growth and time, he's also the active founder forums. The dynamic nature of his shaping up the future of of Monobunt and DragDropr. profession led Norbert to SyncSpider. The key elements for establish and maintain continuous growth and Since a young age, Norbert has long-lasting relationships with improvement were initial always been ecstatic about the various entrepreneurs and feedback, constructive ideas, and future of eCommerce. His visionaries in the eCommerce feature suggestions from new enthusiasm and passion for an realm. users, e-commerce experts, and online world without borders well-established webshop motivated him to launch After collecting valuable feedback founders. Monobunt ‒ a pioneer and one of and analytics from e-commerce Austria's most successful owners for dozens of years, e-commerce agencies that builds Norbert founded SyncSpider and launches plenty of webshops GmbH in 2016. After two years of in a year. www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 47

50. We understand that running an about it. However, not all AI-based the long-term – the priority of marketing campaigns, adoption of e-commerce business is a great technologies are useful and scalable, challenge. Every day, hundreds of new and hence, there is a serious need to cloud-based business applications, apps are being introduced in the digital evaluate which AI technology is worth hardware acceleration of apps, up to realm, so choosing the right stack for considering for your business. speed and accuracy of decision- your e-commerce business can be quite making, and improving the customer complicated. Apart from being able to When it comes to intelligent use of experience, etc. data integrations, AI is expected to choose from over 300 pre-built integrations in our catalogue, we also greatly compliment the human touch in In simple words, try to identify the provide setting up custom workflows the business scenario. As always, barriers to adoption – it's important to for our clients. No one should suffer humans will have to acquire valuable understand how the AI solution will impact the way you will run your wasting countless hours on information, and this will make sure copy-pasting endless data between the data is properly curated before a business and what is it that makes your multiple apps. decision is taken on it. Over time, AI is business stand apart from its expected to offer intelligent competition. This will help you to Being an experienced leader, share recommendations based on contextual identify the immediate steps required with us your opinion on the impact data. This will help the business users to move ahead. in saving time and increasing their of the adoption of modern Taking into consideration the technologies such as AI and machine output. learning on the data integration current pandemic, what initial solutions niche and what more could So how can the business understand challenges did you face, and how did be expected in the future? the importance of AI? You (might) you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring the safety ask? Well, businesses use different I consider myself a strong advocate of languages to express their needs, which of your employees at the same time? the old saying – "work smarter, not is followed by a lack of inter-cultural harder." Let's be honest. When it comes understanding. AI is the bridge SyncSpider has always been a fully to machine learning and AI, the truth is between the business and the users by remote company. We believe that a that many of us are still in the dark and giving key insight into the customers' quality workforce can be found needs. anywhere, and all employees should falling behind on how this technology is being used in everyday business have the flexibility to set up their own work schedules. Our employees have operations. There is no direct connection between the degree of adoption of AI and the the freedom to organize work from their home, a personal office, or any AI will reduce manual labour and time business value that will be generated. wastage by humans, which results in However, we can identify certain other favourite spot. Today, we're improved efficiency. There's no doubt drivers of AI adoption for businesses in proud of assembling a multi-cultural workforce that shares the same vision and values. Demonstrating Brilliance The biggest legacy of COVID-19 is probably the increase in remote work. "Connecting our own ERP software using SyncSpider's Like any other company, SyncSpider universal API was easy to complete in a short time. The support is was not immune to the initial always there if we need them, and now, we can connect any COVID-19 implications. The safety of channel we might need. Great tool!" - Georg Horninger, Head of IT our employees always comes first, so at MwRcCars we've made sure to adjust our daily operations, strategies, and goals to be "We can easily sync our products, prices, and stock from our local perfectly aligned with the general ERP software to our webshop. Goods and attributes are fre- availability of our workforce and the impact that COVID-19 had on their quently changing, so a flexible solution was an obligation. lives. SyncSpider gives us exactly that flexibility." - Kurt Hortehuber, Author and Publisher at OUPS Our employees have the freedom to adjust their own schedule and take as “Instead of adding products by-products to WooCommerce, we many days off as needed at any given used SyncSpider's powerful tools. The project was ready before time. This way, we've managed to the deadline." - Patrizia Faschang, Founder of Webdots www.insightssuccess.com | June 2022 48