“We can now help businesses harvest network data regardless of the infrastructure or software they are using.”

Cloudmeter transforms real-time network data into actionable information for IT and business users, helping organizations understand and optimize their end-users’ experiences. Cloudmeter works with companies whose web presence is critical to their businesses, including name brand customers such as Netflix, SAP, Saks Fifth Avenue and Skinit. The ultimate goal is to help customers’ marketing, IT and business personnel gain full insight into, and understanding of, their users’ experience and behavior. Such insight is made available by harvesting the Big Data ‘gold mine’ available in organizations’ network traffic, and streaming it into their analytics solution of choice (such as Splunk). Cloudmeter’s unique capture and processing solution provides customers with the highest quality of information critical for understanding and optimizing their end users’ e xperiences.

The company’s products, Cloudmeter Stream and Cloudmeter Insight, use ultra-light agents that passively mine Big Data streams generated by web applications without introducing risk or degrading performance.

Cloudmeter Stream combines state-of-the-art data capture with event processing, and seamlessly integrates real-time information with many databases, business intelligence and Big Data products to help organizations conquer their most demanding analytics needs. Cloudmeter Insight is the most advanced End-User Management SaaS solution, which uniquely incorporates visual session replay for exceptionally detailed problem analysis.

Cloudmeter is a venture-funded start-up based in Mountain View, Calif. that works with companies whose web presence is critical to their business, including name brand customers such as Netflix, SAP, Saks Fifth Avenue and Skinit.

What inspired you to launch your business?

I’ve always been fascinated by data and the disruptive nature of the Internet. I started my career as a senior in high school by building a database engine and scripting language that powered some of the earliest dynamic web applications.

John Gage from Sun Microsystems is credited for the phrase “the network is the computer.” This has never been more true than today. All modern software either runs entirely on the web or at least relies heavily on web services.

As a result, online transactions and other interactions now account for a large part of how customers experience and perceive brands. Whether you call it the “Internet,” the “network” or the “Cloud,” it has become a fundamental and transformative part of every business. It carries a massive amount of data in motion unlike any we’ve seen before – extremely valuable data that represents the very heartbeat of your business.

This is why I started Cloudmeter – to help businesses be more successful by harvesting one of the largest and most valuable data sources we have ever seen.

Do you have any recent success stories that you’d like to share with our readers?

Gaining access to network data has historically been challenging. It required owning your infrastructure and installing dedicated hardware on your network. This can be tedious and is not compatible with public cloud environments like Amazon EC2, Rackspace and Azure.

We recently launched two new alternatives to dedicated hardware: a virtual appliance and a lightweight agent. We can now help businesses harvest network data regardless of the infrastructure or software they are using. Even very diverse hybrid environments are not a problem for us.

Previously, our POCs would at least take several weeks. The first POC we had using our new lightweight agent was with a major health care company. We completed it in a day and had a signed purchase order in less than a week. Our product is now being used to help ensure their customers receive the best possible service when performing very important transactions related to their health and well being.

What issue does your core product help solve and how so?

Cloudmeter helps companies optimize end user experiences by passively harvesting the goldmine of data available within their network traffic.

Cloudmeter Insight is a SaaS that provides:

• Search – find anything in your traffic using a query builder or full-text search
• Transactions – understand the meaning of traffic from a business perspective and look for sequences of transactions to identify and track common business processes
• Dashboards & Reports – create custom dashboards tailored for multiple audiences (such as Marketing & IT Ops) and reports for deeper analysis
• Session Replay – understand and optimize transactions and user experiences by inspecting the detailed page-by-page history of each unique visitor session
• Errors & Alerts – detect anomalies, receive notifications, and use reports and replay to investigate and troubleshoot
Cloudmeter Stream is software that enables data scientists to:

• Capture real-time data streams for any activity in your network traffic
• Process data streams using an in-memory event processing platform
• Integrate the results with a wide variety of products such as Hadoop, Splunk, popular analytics tools and databases

Both of our products use the same passive network data capture platform.

What has been your biggest challenge as a business owner and how have you met that challenge?

Balancing between work and family. My two children were born after I started Cloudmeter. My wife and I are fortunate enough to have lots of help. I try to spend time with my family every morning before I go to work, every evening before my kids go to bed, and as much time as possible on the weekends. I try to work around their schedules, and I am a big believer in working smarter not harder.

What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs and business owners? What do you wish someone told you?

Try to stay focused on the big picture. It’s very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activities of running your business and lose track of your high-level goals. Take time away as an opportunity to critique and realign yourself, and make sure that everyone is focusing their attention in the best way possible.