Q and A with @MammothDB our 2015 Big Data Trailblazing winners

As part of the Tech Trailblazers winners’ Q and A series, we caught up with last year’s Big Data Trailblazer, MammothDB. Bulgaria based but Yorkshire, UK raised CMO, Boyan Benev, shares his insights and experience since the 2015 win.

Tell us a little about your company and what it does

MammothDB is a complete cloud-based analytics and business intelligence solution, powering smart, data-driven decision-making for organisations of all sizes.

What has MammothDB been doing in the big data space recently? Any new products/solutions/updates/major successes you’d like to tell us about?

It’s been a busy year for us. We have added a number of great new clients including Cisco Systems and Toll Logistics.

What makes MammothDB different from its competitors?

MammothDB is unique in that it is both familiar and new. Our massively parallel elastic analytical database is built using new technologies so it delivers interactive and scalable performance from GB’s to TB’s of data. At the same time we’ve built MammothDB to be familiar to business users – we’re SQL native so they can easily connect to us using tools they already know to get the answers they need from their data. Whether its Excel, Tableau or any other common tool – from dashboards to deep-dive reporting.

What main sectors are your customers in?

Our customers are in a wide range of industries though we have built up significant experience in logistics. In addition, we have clients in networking, media, retail and finance.

What changes are you seeing in the big data market in 2016?

As the market matures and the hype around ‘big data’ settles, we’re seeing a definite move towards solutions. Clients want to understand the value they can glean from their data and they want companies like us to help them garner it. Business knowledge is precious. Our clients are virtually all business users with a specific task to solve – our task is to understand their business case and show how the technology can solve it.

As a winner in the TT Awards, what difference did it make?

The awards are a great recognition of the hard work of the entire MammothDB team. In addition, they have given us added visibility.

What’s changed in the company since the awards?

MammothDB is built to work on very cost effective hardware. This makes it very interesting in the realm of IoT. Without giving too much away, we’re currently very interested in edge analytics and the ways they complement/enrich established data-warehousing.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a company?

The market for analytics and business intelligence is still nascent. So many of our better-funded competitors have gone out of business while we have managed to achieve near 100% growth over the last two years. Our greatest challenge has been understanding, challenging and adapting the assumptions we’ve held about the market to ensure we can continue to grow.

Q. What have your experiences been as a startup in the Bulgaria, not Silicon Valley? Do you think you would have had a different outcome as a company if you were based in Silicon Valley? Or important to be where you are for any specific reasons?

A. We love being based in Bulgaria. A base in Europe, outside Silicon Valley, has made us more open to markets and clients who are underserved by Valley companies. In addition, we have access to great talent here in Bulgaria – the country is firmly establishing a reputation as the regional tech hub. The downsides are access to financing as compared to SV