An autonomous vehicle on the road needs to perceive the environment around it and make decisions within milliseconds. Imagine a gap of one minute here; guessed right, it will prove fatal. So, what's the way out?

Two crucial things!

One, there is a need to have access to large datasets. Two, the time frame to access these datasets needs to be minimal. Both these scenarios stand firm for even an enterprise today, competing in this post-covid hyper digitisation age. This is where Aerospike's real-time data platform comes in.

The pace of digitisation over the last three years has a completely different story to tell. Aveekshith Bushan, the current Vice President of Asia Pacific & Japan at Aerospike, nodes in agreement and said: "The kind of acceleration we have seen is mind-blowing since we have worked with these companies who are accelerating their businesses." 

"My focus is to ensure that the customers, both in the enterprise segment and startups or unicorn segment, are successful in terms of what they build," he added.

Towards a real-time solution

In the current scenario, the availability of data is no more a question, as organisations are already rich with a humongous volume of data. So now, the main factor is the relevance of data - meaning - do organisations have access to this data in real-time? For Aveekshith, this is the most crucial aspect and outlines two ways to build a solution in real-time. 

The first is to go by the in-memory-based solution. Many market players provide these solutions, but their solutions are built for a small volume of data. It may be a good fit for a driverless car where only the current data needs to be taken into consideration. However, if you want to make a decision based on not just the current data but historical data too, it has to be beneficial only if you have SSD optimised or disk optimised. 

The second is real-time access. "Unlike a lot of these in-memory data platforms, we have built a platform which gives in-memory-like performance out of SSD drive. Cut short; even if your server or the data centre goes down, you still have the data availability as it never goes down," said Aveekshith.

Staying relevant

Customer experience has taken centre stage, with funnel-shaped CX going irrelevant. As a customer, if something doesn't work immediately, the customer will go for a competitor brand. Brands today have that very small microsecond latency window where they have to make sure not to lose out their own customers to their competitors. 

Aveekshith said: "When startups start building a strategy to launch their product into the market, they also look for the appropriate tech stack. They are evident in their mind even before they see the scale that any would expect; they make the strategic choices that will hold the ground for many years to come."

"At some point, you are going to hit a scale thing, and if you don't have a technology infrastructure that can handle that scale, you are not going to be as relevant as you are today," he added.

Today, some of the big brands are using the Aerospike platform to solve some of their niche pain points. For instance, as per Aveekshith, Airtel has been using Aerospike capabilities for over five to six years to provide customised services to its customers via its app. Similarly, PayPal, the financial technology company, enhanced its data platform's response time with Aerospike, which in turn strengthened the fraud detection mechanism.

Challenges to overcome

There is no denying the fact that If a particular business does well, within days, there is adoption - look at the UPI story. 

"You can have the technology, but if people don't adopt it, it is of no use. Challenge is - what if I face a scale problem? What if a competition joins in? For them to be relevant, they need to take their data seriously. You can't have data lying there with using it later attitude. No! Things are changing so quickly that people will soon become your competitor," said Aveekshith.

The need to have ethical data is larger than ever before. The system of checks and balances in the form of regulations is good to go with. Adding on to this, Aveekshith bats to move toward an approach where the government can complement regulations with rewards. Clearing the fog, private companies should know what they are going to get in return for having followed these policies.   

As a result, the government can play a productive role and help propel the sector by incentivising the private sector.