CODE_n Alumni | Catching up with ... SQream Technologies!

SQream Technologies, based in Israel, was CODE_n Finalist in 2014, starting out with graphics processors that captured, stored and processed bid data within seconds. What was already a big deal then has since turned into a business model proving valuable for several industries, including Genome, Cyber Security, Finance and IoT. In his interview CEO and Co-Founder Ami Gal tells us in detail about the amazing things you can do with big data – from Cancer Research to defense cases and gives insight about the development of his company since CODE_n.

Following on from your time as a CODE_n Finalist, what have been Sqream Technologies’ greatest achievements?

Ami Gal, CEO and Founder, SQream Technologies

Ami Gal:SQream’s greatest achievements name a few domains. For starters, SQream’s customer base is growing rapidly. The broad range of use cases SQream DB can be implemented in, has lead to an interest from organizations that have supported our product strategy, leveraging it to answer real-life needs of DBAs and researchers.

One specific use case worth mentioning is a large Genome Cancer Research Center in Israel that approached us, in need for a database being able to handle rapidly scaling large-size datasets in an ultra-fast manner. In search for mutations in specific chromosome positions, large post-sequence datasets were being manually compared to previous findings in other databases. The process was extremely time consuming with an old-school file base system. SQream provided the Research Institution with a database developed specifically for genome researchers – GenomeStack – a database with large-capacity storage enabling pre-uploading of other databases to GenomeStack, as well as uploading of the new research data. The database empowers genome researchers to perform an ultra-fast simultaneous comparison of millions of chromosome positions – with a click of a button. The outcome is an automatic, rapid way for researchers to get to their insights using a database instead of a file base, significantly shortening research timetables. We consider SQream’s contribution to Genome Research to be of great value and a huge achievement, as we are predicting the technology will impact millions of people’s lives.

There are a few other great achievements such as SQream’s geospatial analytics engine and our contribution to Defense related use cases, that is becoming a crucial – perhaps even a life-saving tool, in times when the world is experiencing unfortunate growth in terror-attacks.

What lessons have you learned or failures you’ve experienced and how have you coped with them?

Ami Gal: There are two things to be named here: At some point we understood that we can’t follow through on all customer requirements and that we have to stay focused. Another important issue is the DNA of your team. We have learned that even the slightest DNA issues shouldn’t be tolerated and definitely not compromised.

Meet: The whole SQream Team!

What were your biggest takeaways from your time at CODE_n?

Ami Gal: We learned to listen better to our customer’s main needs and database-related dreams. With that in mind, we aimed and are still aiming, to keep developing a database that will help our customers achieve things they couldn’t, before using SQream.

What advice would you give to startups looking to enter CODE_n?

Ami Gal: Startups should enter CODE_n if their products are relevant to large markets, perhaps with a bias to financial markets.

Speaking of which… While SQream helps enterprises of all sizes and branches, what exactly is it you do for Finance and the Internet of Things?

Ami Gal: Until now, financial institutions were only able to analyze a limited amount of data, mainly due to complex and costly infrastructure requirements. With SQream, financial institutions have the ability to analyze years and years of multi-dimensional data at high-performance and shorten their time-to-market reports from hours to minutes or even seconds. Pulling in data from all departments for enterprise-wide visibility is another use case for financial institutions, looking to drive transformational change and cut downtime. More specifically, with SQream financial institutions are able to mitigate their risk exposure, balance risk with opportunity, and reach more informed decisions based on accurate analytics. Apart from risk management, SQream DB also addresses challenges related to high frequency trading and algorithmic execution; financial analytics; fraud; financial processes; predictive analytics for customer engagement and sales; behavioral data analytics; data security and legal protection.

In the Internet of Things industry (IoT), SQream is delivering a platform for handling rapidly scaling data from multiple sources and sensors – with an unprecedented speed. Furthermore, SQream’s GPU-based (Graphic Processing Unit) software technology, enables to keep the data in a small hardware footprint and even portable. Smart cars for instance, can have a GPU installed in the car that can collect millions of transactions per second, and at the same time, to provide real-time analytics. The future is here.

Thanks so much for taking the time to give us an update on all the amazing thing’s you’ve achieved in the last two years! We’re very proud and are looking forward to hear from you again soon!