IT Life: Egnyte CEO – Beware The Cloud Hangover

The cloud remains one of IT’s most hotly debated topics. Some think it’s just a renaming of the old mainframe style of computing, others think it is going to change IT forever.

Egnyte was founded in 2008 with the sole aim to replace physical file servers and offer cloud and on premise storage to businesses only. It is trying to give customers a product that satisfies their speed, security and scalability demands.

Founded by CEO Vineet Jain, it has received $33 million in funding so far. He is serial IT entrepreneur who moved from India after university to chase his dream in the West. His first job was in the UK coding for Boots after rejecting BT because he didn’t know who they were. We talk with him about his history, his plans for the future and his fears about a cloud “hangover”.

Getting over ‘a cloud hangover’

What were you doing 10 years ago?

I was with my first venture, a supply chain software company called Valdero, I sold it before I started Egnyte. My role there was to be responsible for software engineering. We won contracts with large businesses such as Juniper Networks, Tata Steel and this made me want to build software for the large enterprises, as most are still operating on legacy applications, hardware and missing out on new technology such as cloud. What I learnt most from that venture is to only raise the amount money I really need. I remember in the Series B round, Valdero raised two times more money than we needed.

What will tech be like in 10 years’ time?

With my Nostradamus hat on… I think the role of mobile devices will be more pervasive but there will be a swing back to laptop. I believe this because devices can only do lightweight work and are limited in terms of usability to do work such as building a large financial model on Excel. Is it not true that you can write longer messages without being annoyed on a Blackberry phone because of QWERTY keypad? The PC will come back. Wearable devices will be a fad and won’t make our lives easier, we will be using too many devices because none will do everything we want, I call this ‘device clutter’.

We will have the ‘cloud hangover’ too when businesses increasingly question the security aspects in cloud, and hackings will become more profound. Cloud is a great disruptor for business but we are cloud drunk now. Be aware of the coming cloud hangover as it cannot be the panacea to all technology ailments.

‘Google are good’

Who are your tech heroes?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Google. This may seem trite to some but the business model they have at Google is fantastic. The cash cow is Google search, however they keep building functionality on top of it such as advertising, play but everything depends on the search engine. Therefore, these Google apps have become profit centres by themselves. They used to say all roads lead to Rome, now they say all roads lead to Google.

And who’s your tech villain?

I’m not a fan of the large public companies who buy younger start-ups for the sake of keeping in touch with the kids, and then drain the life out of them by not using or improving the qualities of the company they have bought. You know who they are.

What’s your favourite piece of tech kit ever?

That’s simple, the smartphone. It is an appendage to my body, you’ll never see me without it. I admire all forms of smartphone but right now I’ve got an iPhone. They are unique; I have to pinch myself at times when I can watch Downton Abbey on a phone now.

Who do you admire most as a company?

Google. Why? What would we be if it didn’t exist? Much of the things I said above about Larry and Sergey applies here. Almost everyone uses a Google product every day.

What’s the greatest challenge to IT department today?

To allow BYOD without losing a night’s sleep over it. For sure, the IT department has changed from what it was five years ago as it is facing challenges, driven by mobile devices in the enterprise and what it offers to employees. IT is not the Department of No anymore and now wants to give all employees the technology they want to use but they still need to maintain control. No one want to be the person who sent their business’ stock prices crashing as a result of poor data management. Cost is also a challenge but a boring one. Teams are getting more mobile, IT needs to contend with multiple teams and how they collaborate. Being able to share work wherever the employee is located is one way of solving it.

To cloud or not to cloud?

Yes, obviously I like the cloud, without it I would only have half of a business. Cloud has given companies opportunities to grow like never before due to easy scalability and attractive websites. However, I know the cloud will never be enough, especially for the heavily regulated companies as only a third of them would move everything to the cloud due to security concerns. Again, shifting of heavy files on the cloud only leads to bandwidth being choked, so why not share the burden on the local networks.

What did you want to do when you were young?

Growing up I was a big history buff, I would be your go-to-guy if you needed anyone for a pub quiz. I didn’t think about money when I was young, so I wanted to be an archaeologist, find things no one else has found before. However, it didn’t take too long until I realised there isn’t a lot of money there so I started to learn about computing.

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