RavenDB Ready to Soar in 2021

Oreni Eini of RavenDB tells us about NoSQL Document Database.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Oreni Eini: We are hunkered down at home. In Israel, we have the highest vaccination rate in the world, but we are still in lockdown. Our new peace partner, the UAE, has zero lockdowns. 

They are sticking to social distancing rules. We see with our own eyes how important this is, even with the vaccine. 

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded RavenDB.

Oreni Eini: I have been a developer for 15 years, coding since I was a kid. A little over a decade ago, I was doing a lot of work with SQL databases. I saw how their models hadn’t caught up with the current technology. I realized that since hardware had changed, the way we moved information could change and benefit everyone. 

RavenDB was developed as a Document Database.

How does RavenDB innovate? 

Oreni Eini: We have an amazing development team that is in constant contact with our clients. When our clients say, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could do this with our data…” we get to work. 

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your business finances?

Oreni Eini: We have, thankfully, emerged from 2020 in one piece. For years it was my belief that someone should work where he or she feels most productive. I encouraged those who preferred to work at home to do so. 

We had a great infrastructure for working from home before the pandemic hit. We were ready.

Did you have to make difficult choices regarding human resources, and what are the lessons learned?

Oreni Eini: I learned to be as supportive as possible to my workers. They are at home all day. Their kids are home. They are either coding or writing, tasks that require lots of concentration in an environment where they could be rightfully interrupted at any time of the day by their family. 

It was important to make sure they knew that they were doing fine and their job was safe. There was so much uncertainty everywhere I saw it as a personal responsibility to reduce it wherever I could. 

How did your customer relationship management evolve? Do you use any specific tools to be efficient?

Oreni Eini: We are fortunate that our customers are in contact with us all the time. They move from on-prem to the cloud, from one plan to another, and they are always asking about what RavenDB features work best for changing scenarios in the development of their projects. 

Working from home gave us a chance to spend more time talking with them, in many cases under more informal and comfortable circumstances. 

Did you benefit from any government grants, and did that help keep your business afloat?

Oreni Eini: We didn’t use any grants. 

Your final thoughts?

Oreni Eini: Commerce may have stalled, and we might have been locked in our homes, but the pace of technology didn’t lose a step. As we emerge into the great outside for 2021, a lot will have changed. Unfortunately, there will be businesses that will stop. But they will be replaced by new ideas, new products, and new ventures, embarked upon by the people who had to start over. 

There will be lots of amazing opportunities for 2021 and beyond. In time this will all be seen as a mere hiccup. It is up to my team and me to be ready for a new generation of businesses and applications, starting their information infrastructure from scratch with the newest database technology. 

Your website?

https://ravendb.net/