Event Information:
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Thu17Mar2016
C3DNA’s Application-Centric Automation Approach for the Cloud An interview with Rao Mikkilineni, co-founder & Interim CEO for C3DNA, startup currently in Cisco EIR cohort 3.
- An interview with Rao Mikkilineni, co-founder & Interim CEO for C3DNA, startup currently in Cisco EIR cohort 3. By: Sarah Nguyen
- C3DNA aims to change the entire cloud computing vendor landscape. Their platform brings one-click automation and end-to-end Application Lifecycle Management to the datacenter. In this interview, Rao Mikkilineni, co-founder & Interim CEO for C3DNA, delves into the complexity of cloud management systems.
What is C3DNA’s founding story? What problem were you trying to solve?
The adoption of virtualization and cloud computing began to address application scaling and tolerance to fluctuations in both workloads and availability of resources. But orchestrating the required infrastructure across distributed resource pools operated and managed by different providers is not scalable without increasing complexity and cost.
We started looking at how to decouple applications from the underlying infrastructure. Alan Turing himself suggested a solution in the form of the Turing Oracle machine. We used this concept to infuse cognition into the Turing Machine and make the applications self-managing. This architecture was a major breakthrough in computer science that not only addresses cloud management complexity, but also solves fundamental issues with concurrence, synchronization, mobility, and other distributed computing problems.
Our product provides an order of magnitude improvement in managing legacy and new applications.
Do you have any direct competitors?
We don’t have any direct competitors but a few organizations are working on or offer a partial solution. Here is what Dr. M. R. Pamidi, Editor-in-Chief of IT Newswire, wrote about C3DNA “To say we are very impressed with C3DNA’s product and technology is an understatement. The company’s innovative and imaginative team has come up with a unique solution that could change the entire cloud computing vendor landscape. As one industry analyst put it, C3DNA is Uber-ifying this industry that could spell the end for many vendors still fighting IaaS, PaaS, SaaS…wars.”
You’ve recently partnered with Tech Mahindra to distribute “Cloud Equalizer” Platform in Japan. What can we expect from this alliance?
Using C3DNA’s Smart discovery agent, Tech Mahindra customers can discover, profile, and migrate any distributed application, including filesystems and databases, to any public, private, or hybrid cloud without changing the application, OS, or re-architecting the application to become cloud native.
In addition, they can configure, monitor and control any distributed application to optimize its availability, performance, security, and compliance within or across private, public, or hybrid clouds, independent of what infrastructure they have deployed.
What are your goals while in Cisco EIR?
In the near future, we hope to provide Cisco with competitive differentiation with our technology that has a wide range of applications beyond current cloud-agnostic services deployment and management.
What is your #1 advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs?
There are two types of innovation: Kaizen and Disruptive Innovation. “Kaizen” is the means of continuous improvement that provides incremental benefits. Disruptive Innovation changes the current state of the art and provides orders of magnitude improvements. It’s important to choose your path because they require different vision, VCs, and expertise.
The first approach requires domain knowledge in the particular areas where you can provide improved solutions. The second requires a wide mastery in many areas that allows you to visualize a future that is not visible from the current state of the art. It is said that a great sculptor does not see a stone but visualizes how and where that stone fits as a sculpture.
What does C3DNA stand for?
The three ‘C’s are for Cognition, Computing, and Communications. The ‘3’ stands for the three steps in the process: application ‘DNA’ captured by C3DNA (policies, components, configuration, and workflow); the distributed DNA application control platform that interprets application DNA; and the agent-based mechanism that encapsulates and delivers this. DNA is DIME Network Architecture. This new computing model was presented first in the Turing Centenary Conference held in Manchester in 2012.