The Tools and Tech This Streaming Data Company’s CTO Is Eyeing

Security and privacy are evergreen concerns when it comes to handling customer data — but when assessing the current state of the industry, Andrew Murray, CTO of streaming data company MetaRouter, sounds encouraged by recent developments in the space.

“There are more tools coming online to more aggressively protect consumer data than we have previously seen,” Murray said. Those tools ultimately depend on where that data is housed, whether in the cloud or on-premise.

Both, Murray explained, confer respective advantages. 

“The cloud provides an easier and more cost-effective approach to managing infrastructure without necessarily trading the security concerns,” Murray said. 

A private, on-premise platform, conversely, lends itself to autonomy of operations. “This level of control also allows you to retain data at a higher level of detail, resulting in better compliance and more complete data sets as restrictions around this space continue to tighten,” Murray said. 

That’s to say, there’s no uniform solution for data security and compliance. Below, Murray shared the importance of exerting control of streaming data, his enthusiasm for Kubernetes and why preserving the “human element” is core to the company’s tech culture.

What are the biggest challenges or sensitivities you face in providing secure data routing services? 

A big challenge we face is educating our potential data partners about the benefit of receiving data from our platform, in lieu of their own tracking logic directly on the client’s website or application. While the benefit of removing third-party tags is more obvious for our client, data partners are more reluctant to remove their own tags and rely exclusively on our platform for delivery. However, once clients understand the boost in data quality and delivery —  as well as the mutual benefit to our shared client — they tend to get on board quickly.

While we’re typically associated with the continuous data protection space, our focus is purely around the control and portability of the data, as opposed to providing insights into that data. With that focus, we maintain full privacy on the information that we process with our on-premises and private enterprise solutions since our platform does not require us to have access to the raw data it processes.
 

We focus a lot on the human element, and not just productivity, as a metric of success.”

What is the benefit of essentially owning one’s data routing?

The main benefit is control — not only over the features and functions of your data routing but also over the data and its syndication. This control is provided by having your own systems be the first to receive any analytical data, because the platform collects data in a first-party context. This provides a safe haven for data to exist (and be obscured or omitted) before it is sent to a service where you don’t have direct insight or control over the data, acting in the third-party context. Being the first party to control this data opens up a world of possibilities. 

First, your data is not locked into a specific provider.  All the data from your digital properties are yours to keep forever. Also, you have full control over the data specifics that are sent to third parties, redacting or hashing the sensitive values that these parties do not need access to (allowing CCPA, GDPR, even HIPAA compliance by default). Additionally, you lower the risk of security breaches within systems that you don’t have control over, since they receive only what they need to function and do not have full visibility into the browser session.

This level of control also allows you to retain data at a higher level of detail, resulting in better compliance and more complete data sets as restrictions around this space continue to tighten.

What does the embrace of the cloud mean for MetaRouter and the cloud-based solutions it offers?

We see what others see with cloud: It provides an easier and more cost-effective approach to managing infrastructure without necessarily trading the security concerns. The capabilities, offerings and availability have exploded for all of the cloud providers, making it a very difficult pathway not to consider.

However, we are not just focused on cloud-based solutions and are currently working toward supporting on-prem version of our enterprise product built on Kubernetes to support those who cannot transition to SaaS or private cloud.

How have you seen your clients leverage your platform?

The modularity of our platform provides many benefits. Our larger clients see substantial decreases in their e-commerce page load times from the removal of tags on their site, without burdening their team with maintaining these data connections to the vendors. Additionally, they see improved data accuracy and consistency across partners. Since the platform doesn’t require the high degree of IT or engineering work it would in the past, their analytics and marketing departments are able to onboard new tools in record time. 

Our smaller startup clients are able to have a running streaming data platform in less than a day, saving significant cost and runway from having to create one on their own. Using the data stored in their warehouses or lakes allows them to evaluate larger sets of data during free trials or discount periods to make informed decisions.  

Lastly, we are currently working with companies within this space to help power their data routing infrastructure, reducing their cost and allowing their team to focus on achieving organizational goals instead.
 

The capabilities, offerings and availability have exploded for all of the cloud providers.”

Generally, what are clients’ biggest pain points when implementing this service like this? How might MetaRouter alleviate that? 

The biggest pain point by far is maintaining the connective tissue to third-party vendors. Our core offering is not only providing a platform that can stream data, but also providing out-of-the-box connections to vendors that our clients’ teams no longer need to shoulder. 

With all of the new data streaming capabilities cloud providers offer, it would take a few months of work to create a platform that streams data to APIs. The true self-maintenance cost comes when APIs across multiple vendors have updates and breaking changes that teams are responsible for monitoring and patching within an environment that cannot be offline for any amount of time, which tends to occur a few months after the system is created.

Also, organizations must ensure their own departments have the correct access and control around sending data to vendors. Usually, the larger the organization, the more pronounced an issue this becomes, as more departments have a stake in receiving quality and real-time analytical data from all of their properties. Since it doesn’t require any code implementation, our system can also help provide oversight with who is allowed to receive data and what parts of the data they are able to access.

What emerging tech does MetaRouter have its eyes on?

We’re huge advocates of Kubernetes and its ability to provide easier operation of deployed applications. Currently, our only deployment method requires it, as it abstracts away most of the proprietary, non-reusable code you would need to support large infrastructure projects that can handle over 1 billion requests a day, if necessary. With minimal tweaks, we can deploy and automatically scale to multiple cloud and private hosting solutions.

Also, it makes it really straightforward to deploy other solutions alongside, where multiple applications can coexist within the same server pool without having to manually tweak security and communication settings.

How would you describe the tech culture at MetaRouter? 

We focus a lot on the human element, and not just productivity, as a metric of success. We want our teammates to be able to unplug. Also, we promote a culture of fearless questioning and curiosity, facilitating many opportunities for feedback across the team. Having many viewpoints is invaluable to remain current within our space.