Egnyte’s Vineet Jain Interview
Posted by Tom Blue on July 28, 2009 under Companies, Funding, Profiles | 
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We just did an “eInterview” with Vineet Jain who is the CEO of Egnyte. Egnyte provides on-demand file servers for small businesses. They just received $6M in funding from Polaris/Maples yesterday…
What does Egnyte do?
Egnyte provides an On-Demand File Server for small and mid-sized businesses to store all corporate data, securely share files within and outside the company and backup employee computers in the cloud.
In March 2009, the company unveiled a complementary solution to its existing On-Demand File Server – Egnyte “Local Cloud”. Egnyte’s Local Cloud blends a hosted online solution with an on-premise solution, providing the benefits of unlimited storage, secure access anywhere, easy file collaboration, built in disaster recovery, fast access, off-line access and the ability to run client server applications locally.
Who are your competitors?
Within larger businesses we see Microsoft Sharepoint, some smaller consumer solutions such as Mozy address small components of our solutions such as backup.
What makes you different than them?
Egnyte allows small and mid-sized businesses to store all of their coproate data, securely share files within and outside the company and automatically backup employee computers. We are unique in that we allow businesses to move to cloud computing and replace their file servers but also have maximum flexibility and control through what we’ve termed the “local cloud.” Businesses can hold their data locally on off the shelf hardware or on their computer hard drive. This mitigates concerns some companies have over storing their data in the cloud on the internet. We also have mobile capabilities with the iPhone devices and have a strong following within the Mac community.
What are your biggest challenges as CEO?
Even though cloud based services are being accepted and adopted by businesses, there is still a high percentage of businesses that are uncomfortable with having their data in someone else’s servers. Based on a recent survey where we profiled our customer base, 99% of small business respondents validated that Internet outages can be detrimental to business. In fact, the survey showed that if the Internet was down for only one hour, over half (51%) would be moderately impacted and nearly a quarter of respondents (20%) severely impacted. Given the variety of bandwidth connections and lack of internet access in different scenarios, the challenge is to address THIS issue successfully for a group (and not just one individual).
From the operation perspective, a hosted solution like Egnyte successfully transforms the customer’s cap-ex problem into a simpler monthly op-ex charge. However, it is critical for the provider (Egnyte) not to inherit the cap-ex burden. This is addressed by a smart combination of right architecture and right hardware, which is a non-trivial problem.
Which marketing tactic/strategy has produced the most leads/revenue for your company?
Egnyte, right from its founding, was aware of limitations of pure cloud based solutions which can be germane for certain businesses. Local copy of data, team off-line access, latency challenges editing large files (25MB size) online are some of the limitations that a pure cloud based service can not address adequately. The Egnyte Local Cloud, released in March 2009 has been key to our strategy for larger class of customers. All sales data so far indicates that this has been a very successful product.
How long have you been in business?
Founded in 2006 and launched in 2008
How many employees do you have?
15
What are your revenue estimates for 2009? Is that an increase from 2008?
Growth is project to be 15% month over month—also average number of seats per customer is on the rise. We are optimistic that our growth will remain strong as our solution becomes mainstream for small businesses.
