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>> Afternoon everybody,
I'm John Wallis and welcome back to our coverage here
on the cube of AWS re:Invent 22.
We are bringing you another segment with the global
start up program which is part of the AWS
start up showcase and it's a pleasure to welcome
two new guests here to the showcase.
First immediately to my right,
Hawn Nguyen Loughren, good to see you Hawn.
>> Good to see you.
>> The leader of the enterprise solutions
architecture at AWS.
And on the far right, Roland Lee,
who is the co founder and CEO of Heimdall Data.
Roland, good to see you!
>> Great to be here.
>> All right good. Thanks for joining us.
Well first off, for those at home whom will
not be familiar with Heimdall.
What do you do? Why are you here?
I'll let you take it from there.
>> Well we're one of the sponsors here at AWS
and great to be here.
We offer a data access layer in the form of a proxy
and what it does it is provides complete visibility
and the capability to enhance the interaction
between the application and ones current database.
And as a result, the customer will improve database scale,
database security and availability.
And all these features don't require
any application changes.
So that's sort of our marketing pitch if you will.
All these types of features to improve the experience
of managing a database without any application changes.
>> And where's the cloud come into play then for you then?
Where did it come into play for you?
>> So we started out actually helping out customers
on-premise and a lot of enterprise customers
are moving over to the cloud
and it was just a natural progression to do that.
And so,
AWS which is a key part of ours,
partners with us to help solve customer problems.
Especially on the database side as the application
performance tends to have issues between the interaction
between the application database
and we're solving that issue.
>> So Hawn, I mean, Roland has touched
on that on-prem, right?
There's still some kickers and screamers out there
that don't have a but in or their about to
but you're about to get em', I'm sure.
But, talk about that conversion or that transition
if you would for what on-prem into a hybrid
environment or into the bigger cloud environment
and how difficult that is sometimes
maybe to get people to make that kind of a leap.
>> Well I would say that a lot of customers are wanting
to focus more on product innovation, experimentation
and also in terms of having to manage servers and patching.
You know, it's the takeaway from that initiative
that they're trying to do.
So with AWS, we provide undifferentiated heavy lifting
so that they can focus on product innovation.
And one of the years, talking about Heimdall,
is that from the database side we do provide
Amazon RDS, which is a relational database
and also Aurora to give them that lift.
So they don't have to worry about patching servers
and setting up provisioning servers as well.
>> So, Roland can you get the idea across to people
very simply, let us take care of the hard stuff
and that will free you up to do your
product innovations to do your experimentation
to really free up your team, basically,
to do the fun stuff and let us sweat over the details.
Basically, right?
>> Exactly, our motto is not only
why build when you can buy.
So, a lot of it has to do with offering the value,
in terms of price, and the features,
such is going to benefit a team.
Large companies like Amazon.com, Google.
They have huge teams that can build
data access layers and proxies.
And what we're trying to do here is commercialize this.
'Cause those are built in house and it's not
readily available for customers to use.
And you need some type of interface between the application
and the database, and we provide that.
Sort of, why build when you can buy.
>> Well let's just say why Hawn though, right?
I mean what's your special sauce because everybody's
got something obviously, a market differentiator
that you're bringing into place here.
So, you started to touch on a little bit there for me
but dive a little deeper there.
I mean, what is it that you're bringing to the table
with AWS that you think puts you above the crowd.
>> Well let me give you a use case here.
In typical events like, let's say, Black Friday
where there's a surge in traffic
that can overwhelm the database.
The Heimdall data access layer database proxy
provides an auto scaling distributed architecture
such that it can absorb those surges in traffic
and help scale the database while keeping
the data fresh and up to date.
And so, basically, traffic based on season, time of day,
we can adjust automatically.
And all these types of features that we offer.
Most notably, automated query caching,
read/write split for ACID compliance,
don't require any code changes which typically
requires the application developer to make those changes.
So we're saving months maybe years of
development and maintenance.
>> Yeah, a lot of gray hairs too, right?
Yeah you're solving a lot of problems there.
What about database transit just in general, Hawn?
This is your space, right?
What we're hearing about from Heimdall in terms
of solutions their providing.
But what are you seeing just from the macro level
in terms of what people are doing and thinking
about the database and how it relates to the cloud.
>> And some of the things that we're seeing
is that we're seeing explosion of data.
Relevant data that customers need to be able to consume
and also process as well.
So, with the explosion of data there's also
we see customers trying to modernize their application
as well through micro services.
Which does change the design patterns of the
applications we call the access data patterns as well.
So, again, going back to that undifferentiated
heavy lifting, we do have something called
purpose built databases, right?
It's the right tool for the right purpose.
And so, it depends on what their RPO, RTO,
their access data pattern.
Is it a base? Is it an acid?
So, we want to be able to provide them the options
to build and also innovate.
So with that, that's why we have the Amazon RDS.
We also have Redshift, we also have Aurora and et cetera.
The Redshift is more of the BI side but usually
when you ingest the data you have some level
of processing to getting more insight.
So, with that, that's why customers are moving
more towards the managed servers so that they
can get that lift and then focusing on
that product innovation.
>> Yeah, have we kind of caught up or are we catching up
to this, just this tsunami of data to begin with, right?
Because, I mean that was it, you know, what seven eight
years ago when that data became kind of or becoming king
and reams and reams and reams and all, you know.
Can't handle it, right?
And are we now able to manage that process and manage
that flow and get the right data into the right hands
at the right time?
Are we going better, with that?
>> I would say that it definitely has grown
in size of the amount of data that we are ingesting.
And so, with the scalability and agility of the cloud
we're able to, I would say, adapt to the
rapid changes and ingestions of the data.
So, that's why we have things like Aurora Serverless
to have that auto scale.
So they can do, like, my SEQual or (indistinct)
and then they can still, like what Heimdall, you know,
is trying to do, is basically don't have to do
code changes they would be a data migration.
They still use the same underlying database
on also mechanisms.
But here we're providing them at scale on the cloud.
>> Are proxies, are the must have for all databases?
I mean, is that essential these days?
>> Well good question, John.
I would say yes and this is often built in house
as I mentioned from large companies they do build
some type of data access layer or proxy and
or sometimes utilize some ROM,
some object relational mapper to do it.
And again what we're trying to do is offer this,
put this out to the market commercially speaking.
Such that it can be readily used
for all the customers rather than building
it from scratch, all the time.
>> You know what I didn't ask you was,
how does AWS come into play, for you?
And as in this start up mode the focus that they've had
in start ups in general but in you in particular,
I mean, talk about that partnership or that relationship
and the value that you're extracting from that.
>> The AWS partnership has been absolutely wonderful.
The collaboration, they have one of the best
managed service databases.
The value that it adds in terms of the durability,
the manageability.
What the Heimdall data does is it compliments
Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift very well in the sense that
we're not replacing the database.
What we're doing is we are allowing the customer
to get the most out of the managed service database.
Whether it be Redshift or Aurora Serverless, RDS,
all without code changes.
The analogy that I would give, John,
is a race car may be very fast,
but it takes a driver to get to those fast speeds.
We're the driver.
The Heimdall proxy provides that intelligence
so that you get the most out of that database entry.
>> And Hawn, if you would then touch on first off,
AWS and the emphasis that you have put on start ups
and are obviously, you know,
kind of putting your money where your mouth is, right?
With the way you've encouraged
and nurtured that environment.
And maybe about Heimdall in general about
where you see this going and what you would like to
have, where you want to take this in the next say
12 months, 18 months.
>> Well I think it's more of a better together story
of how we can basically co-build with our partners, right?
And basically focusing on helping our customers
and drive that innovation and collaboration.
So Heimdall as an independent service vendor ISV
most customers can leverage that through a marketplace
where it basically integrates very nicely with AWS
so it gives them that lift.
And it goes back to the undifferentiated heavy lifting
on the Heimdall proxy side, if you will.
Because then you have this proxy in the middle
where then it helps them with their SEQual performance.
And I've seen these cases where customers
have some legacy system that they may not
have time to modernize the application
so they use this as a lift to keep going
as they try to modernize.
But also I've seen customers who are trying to use it
as a way to give that performance lift because
they may have a third party software that they
cannot change the code,
by putting this in there it helps optimize
their aligns of business or whatever that is.
I mean, it can be an online store or whatever.
So I would say its a better together type of story.
>> Yeah, its just, there's got to be song in there somewhere.
(Hawn laughs)
>> So peak around the corner,
if you want to be headlights here right now,
in terms of 12, 18 months,
I mean what next to solve, right?
You've already taken, you've slayed a few dragons
along the way but there are others I'm sure,
as it always happens in innovation in this space.
Just when you solve a problem you have to deal
with others that pop up as maybe unintended consequences
or at least a new challenge.
So what would that be in your world right now?
What do you see occupying your sleepless nights
here for the next year or so?
>> Well for Heimdall data it's all about
improving database performance and scale
and those workloads change.
We have OLTP we have OLAP with
artificial intelligence ML.
There's different types of traffic profiles
and we're focused on improving those data profiles.
They can be unstructured, structured.
Right now we're focused on structured data,
which is relational databases, but there's a lot
of opportunity to improve the performance in data.
>> Well you're driving the car, you got a good navigator.
I think the GPS is working.
(Roland laughs)
>> So keep up the good work and thank you
for sharing the time today.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you John.
>> Really do appreciate it.
All right, you are watching theCUBE.
We continue our coverage here from AWS re:Invent 22
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