Amit Sharma: Helping Organizations With World Class Connectivity

Born out of its culture of excellence in engineering and appreciation for standards, CData is a leader in the world of connectivity. It offers real-time connections to more than 250 SaaS applications, databases, ERPs, and CRM systems including Salesforce, NetSuite, Workday, ServiceNow, etc. Originally conceived as an application for integration, CData quickly pivoted to standard-based connectors that could be used along with any other data management solution. It was the first company to build ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET drivers for SaaS applications.

CData also realized the need for a standard approach that can allow every system to communicate in the same way, as the APIs are inconsistent and prone to change. Soon business intelligence vendors like Tableau, Sisense, SAS, and data integration vendors like Informatica and Matillion, who needed a broad range of connectivity within their products, recognized CData’s approach. These initial OEM partnerships have later blossomed into partnerships with more than 150 vendors, which include companies like Google, Tibco, and Palantir.

The Steadfast Leader

CData is being led by its CEO and founder, Amit Sharma, who defines CData’s technical platform and business strategy. Amit’s leadership has helped his company to rise from a small start-up to a leading provider of data access and connectivity solutions.

He pursued his schooling at a boarding school in Western India, followed by engineering in Central India. After completing his engineering degree, Amit Sharma joined Infosys in Bangalore. However, he soon moved to the U.S for his MS in Computer Networking at the NC State, where he was exposed to the start-up world. After completing his MS, Amit joined a wireless security start-up named Elixar, then went on to meet the other co-founders of CData at a North Carolina-based start-up called /n software. They enjoyed working with each other so much that they spent nearly a decade together before breaking into the connectivity space with CData in 2016.

Amit Sharma has also received his MBA degree from Duke Fuqua School of Business.

Under Amit’s leadership, CData now offers additional capabilities, including data integration with CData Sync, and application integration with CData Arc. Recently, thcompany has launched its first platform that offers direct, real-time connectivity as a service. CData Connect Cloud helps businesses manage their connectivity needs and leverage data within the application or platform of their choice without the need to build complex data pipelines.

Influencing Factors

Amit Sharma considers himself lucky to start his career at one of the most sought-after companies in India, Infosys. Then he followed it up by joining a start-up, which was ultimately destined to fail. Although the contrast could not be more dramatic, it influenced his choices from then on. Soon he was hooked to the energy, intensity, and excitement of building something new.

Amit Sharma strongly believes that a smart group of people who love working together can overcome any obstacle. So, he feels it was very important for him to build a passionate team where the culture is conducive to doing the best work.

Industry Insights

Amit Sharma believes the data landscape for enterprises is quickly getting fragmented. Although the advent of SaaS applications simplified various business operations, they also fragmented business data in various clouds that are quite difficult to integrate. Most organizations use a multitude of different SaaS applications, each of which becomes their own data repository.

The first wave of integration trends was to bring everything together in a central data warehouse. However, this process was very costly to set up and possessed a lot of risks. Data movement had to be managed carefully, and security rules set up in the application were often lost.

The CData team believes that the next wave of data integration is one of direct and real-time connectivity. In this wave of data integration, organizations will be able to leave their data where it originated and access it when needed.

CData feels there are a few solutions to do that, and it intends to be a leader in that category.

Motivating the Team

CData employees are a competitive bunch of people, and Amit Sharma likes to remind the team that this small company based out of Chapel Hill, NC, helps powering a portion of the planet’s leading infrastructure software deployed within products from Tibco, Google, Tableau, and others.

CData competes in a cutthroat market, where driver technology is easy to compare, and performance measurement can happen in milliseconds. Amit and the entire team at CData take pride in winning against every other product in terms of speed and stability, using their innovative techniques.

Under Amit’s leadership, CData has expanded its problem-solving culture to its customer success team. Customer Success is not only a part of its business, but it is the business for the company. CData’s data connectivity ensures the re-use of analytics systems and models that its customers have built currently.

Amit says, “Innovation is important, but it is essential to pair that with a rock-solid support system that gives our customers the freedom to advance their work.” He feels, that watching his colleagues and team members build great careers and achieve their potential gives him tremendous satisfaction. He further adds, “What little part I had to play in that is very satisfying to me.”