Interview with Stuart Frost, CEO and Founder of Datallegro

BK: What's DATAllegro's data warehouse appliance, and how are your customers using it?

SF: Our product is a complete data warehouse solution - software, hardware and storage. It provides an order of magnitude improvement in terms of price/performance when compared with traditional solutions. Typical customers use our appliance to augment existing data warehouses in the 1-5 terabytes range so that they can provide faster reports to a larger number of their employees.

BK: Why is there a need for a data warehouse appliance--as opposed to just buying a machine with bigger/better CPU and upgrading your database?

SF: Most of our customers are finding that they are falling into a 'data warehouse capability gap'. Data and demand for queries against the data are growing in excess of 100%, driven by compliance regulations and trends such as RFID. However, the traditional data warehouse platforms such as Oracle on Sun or HP are only improving at around 30% per annum. Adding more CPUs etc. to an existing server quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns - doubling server power only improves performance by 20-40%. What's needed is a 'step-change' in data warehouse performance - which is provided through the Datallegro appliance.

BK: What are your company's primary routes to market?

SF: We sell direct, usually after an introduction from a partner.

BK: Why did you decide to found DATAllegro?

SF: I recognized the data warehouse capability gap around two years ago and decided that it was a great opportunity for my next startup.

BK: What's your prior background and experience, and how does it relate to DATAllegro?

SF: Prior to Datallegro I was Founder & CEO of a $30m NASDAQ data modeling company called SELECT Software Tools. I have also worked with a large number of other technology companies, helping them with strategy and funding.

BK: I see you recently received a venture round -- how much was the round, and who were the investors?

SF: $6m Series A from Palomar and Venrock.

BK: What's your current plan for funding--are you anticipating a future venture round?

SF: We anticipate raising a Series B in mid-2005.

BK: How long has your product been available?

SF: The product is in Beta right now and will be generally available in the second quarter of 2005.

BK: Finally, what's your company's next big challenge?

SF: Building a base of very happy reference customers.

BK: Thanks!

posted on Friday, October 8, 2004