INTERVIEW WITH ROB UTZSCHNEIDER, TORRENT SYSTEMS
by Tim Staub, managing editor

Interview with Rob Utzschneider, Founder and vice president, Business Development for Torrent Systems

DSstar: Rob, tell us a bit more about how Torrent was founded -­ I know the company has some origins at MIT but what were those origins, specifically?

RU: The person who was the architect for Orchestrate came out of the Lab for Computer Science at MIT. He had been working on research involving software data flow architectures for parallel computers. Before founding Torrent, I worked for a small company that was building parallel computers. When I was there it became clear to me that someone had to tackle the problem of how to make software that would work on these machines. The original funding for the project at MIT came from DARPA.

DSstar: Torrent was founded in 1993 ­ what has helped keep the company afloat through a tumultuous few years in the technology industry?

RU: We have very strong core technology and over time, customer data volumes have grown and grown. Because of that more and more Fortune 500 and Systems Integrators have recognized the need for building parallel tools. Demand for our type of technology has done nothing but increase. Most dot coms that floundered were based on shaky value propositions and shallow technology. We have held on to our vision that the need for this technology would become mainstream and we offer a deep core technology that delivers tremendous value.

DSstar: What markets are your customers in?

RU: End users of Orchestrate are Fortune 1000 companies and application service providers that support those companies. Most of our customers fall into retail, financial and telecommunications markets.

DSstar: How does Torrent sell its product(s)?

RU: We currently have a sales force for direct sales and we're working with more and more business partners, including software vendors that produce tools and applications. This includes consultants and systems integrators as well as large service bureaus and service providers.

DSstar: Where does Torrent get the majority of its sales revenue?

RU: Most revenue, traditionally, has come from direct sales but we've seen a significant shift in the past six months and it's split evenly now between direct sales and partners. But I expect more and more will come from partners over time.

DSstar: Why is that?

RU: Again, all of these big players in the markets in which we participate have recognized the need for scalability. They know that they need a platform that enables near real-time data processing with infinite scalability in order to gain insight from the increasing amounts of data that exist. Our vision from the beginning was to establish Orchestrate as an industry standard platform upon which people could build their data warehousing and analytical applications. The market is now at the point where our partners and end users need to take advantage of our platform.

DSstar: As vice president responsible for market development you're highly involved with creating and maintaining relationships with partners ­ can you tell me about your partner strategy? How do you decide what companies you'd like to partner with?

RU: It's a combination ­ they approach us, we approach them. We've set broad goals defining the types of partnerships we want to build. We've been aggressive about pursuing companies that fit that definition. Ultimately, our long-term objective is to establish Orchestrate as an industry standard platform so, similar to BEA's model, as you add partners, the platform becomes more valuable and over time it becomes easier to add partners because you reach critical mass.

DSstar: So you work closely with partners ­ do you and the partner companies share referrals and/ or participate in joint sales & marketing efforts?

RU: Yes. The approaches we take vary depending up on the partner and how they're using our product. Some embed Orchestrate and they have total responsibility for selling to and supporting their customers. We are, increasingly, doing joint marketing and selling with our partners, though.

DSstar: Can you give us an example of how your technology is used?

RU: Sure. Orchestrate fully leverages the parallel-processing capabilities of the UNIX servers, and delivers the throughput and scalability associated with popular database software to applications that run outside of the database. This includes processes such as extracting, transforming and loading data (ETL), data cleansing, data quality and householding, as well as high-performance custom analytical routines for CRM initiatives.

Orchestrate users have realized tens -- even hundreds -- of millions of dollars in ROI from rapid exploitation of parallel computing. Let me give you an example. One of our partners is a company called MedStat that generates $100 million in revenue annually. They package a pre-built data warehouse with a set of decision support tools and they sell it as a turnkey solution to large health insurance providers like Blue Cross Blue Shield and large health insurance companies. They used to be on mainframes but several years ago they moved to UNIX and wanted to ensure scalability so they built on Orchestrate as the architecture and we generate a revenue stream as they sell their systems.

DSstar: What environments does Orchestrate run in?

RU: Orchestrate works with all the major database and data warehousing vendors' technology. It runs on UNIX and Linux servers.

DSstar: Tell us about your view of the data warehousing market ­ what's the "hot spot?"

RU: There are a number of trends all happening simultaneously. First, data volumes are growing explosively. It used to be that a terabyte was a large data warehouse -- now companies are storing tens of terabytes of data and facing all new challenges.

Second, data warehousing used to be batch processing ­ you used to load and run queries once a month or once a week, but you were not updating constantly. Orchestrate enable for more continuous processing so you can trigger events/analysis as the events occur as opposed to doing it in batches at specific time intervals.

Lastly, customers are looking for greater levels of packaging ­ building from scratch is going away and customers want packaged, turnkey solutions. This is why we at Torrent are seeing so much interest from our partners, they know their customers want higher levels of packaging.

DSstar: What is Torrent's view for the future of the industry?

RU: There are many critical business problems companies have wanted to solve but haven't been able to because they didn't have a way to quickly process and analyze their massive volumes of data. With the strength of our partnerships and core technology, we know we can help companies solve these problems and gain valuable business insight from their data by building applications using our software. We've never been more excited than we are now because of what's going on in the market.

Contact Paula Kibbe, Quasar Communications for Torrent Systems, 508-266-2067, pkibbe@quasarcommunications.com.