Green Tech: Ian Leysen of Datadobi On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact On The Environment

An Interview With Jilea Hemmings

DatadobiStorageMAP allows customers to focus on unstructured data management, giving them a detailed insight into their carbon footprint. For instance, between 80% to 90% of all data is unstructured and is not actively managed, leading to endless cloud and storage usage, with the associated environmental impact. Organizations that don’t manage unstructured data are generating a lot of waste.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ian Leysen.

Ian has spent his entire career focusing on building quality. Having built three quality assurance software engineering organizations from the ground up, Ian ensures that quality is at the core of Datadobi in every way, for every customer. He has held senior positions at EMC, MEDIAGENIX, and Waves Research. He has a Master of Engineering in Electronics and is Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certified.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

My parents built a house in the woods back in the day, and as a result, my childhood was mostly spent outside, and there were no distractions from computers in the 70s or 80s. Despite losing my mother when I was nine, I had a happy childhood, and having also lost my father when I was 23, I’ve learned to be self-sufficient from a young age.

I studied microelectronics in high school and university (which also included a Master’s degree). I got into the software business right away via an internship opportunity. That started me on the career path to where I am today.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I was working at EMC, now Dell, and was asked to help get the first release of Centera out the door — the first commercially available object storage platform. My first working day happened to be 9/11, and the day before starting, I flew back from a holiday in Greece and happened to see an image online of one of the main developers of the Centera API, who was in New York at that point in time and visiting the Twin Towers. We feared the worst, but thankfully, the images were taken a few days before, and he was safe and well.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Many, many people, of course, but certainly Jan Van Riel (the co-founder of Filepool, which was later sold to EMC), who hired me for my first and third jobs, including my role at EMC. In both situations, he asked me to help ship a major software product release within six months.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Yes, it comes from a mentor of mine, Peter Schnorr, who said: “Hard work brings more hard work.” The point is, if you work hard and smart, you’ll do well for your stakeholders, and that will bring you more opportunities and work. This remains part of my workplace DNA, as it does for the founders of Datadobi and our wider team.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

One thing that has been important to me is to lead by example when it comes to getting work done. You have to work hard to get somewhere, and yes, you still need luck, but you’re likely to become luckier when you put in more effort. In addition, it’s important to focus on problem-solving, and in our business, that means taking a scientific and engineering-led approach. You also need detailed insight and context around any challenge or opportunity so that everyone understands their role and what the correct solution will be.

In many situations within the technology environment, it’s much more interesting for teams to help think about the solution to a problem, and finding people who embrace this approach is always positive. Thirdly, build a business around people and not people around the business. Every person has strengths and weaknesses, so focus on building complementary strengths within each team — both from a skills perspective and an attitude perspective. If you do well in those things, you can build great teams.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on the planet and the environment. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?

DatadobiStorageMAP allows customers to focus on unstructured data management, giving them a detailed insight into their carbon footprint. For instance, between 80% to 90% of all data is unstructured and is not actively managed, leading to endless cloud and storage usage, with the associated environmental impact. Organizations that don’t manage unstructured data are generating a lot of waste.

How do you think your technology can address this?

If you can lower your storage footprint by 70% by applying the correct information unstructured data lifecycle techniques, the savings for companies — financial and environmental — are enormous.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

For the first 20 years of my life, I travelled with my parents across the globe on holidays and created about 400 analog pictures with a film camera. Today, people might typically create the same number of digital pictures in an hour. In a digital archive of 40,000 pictures, for instance, 70% might be unprocessed — they just get stored and backed up, often more than once, even if people don’t know if they are even worth keeping. This approach to data and storage creates costs, takes time, and results in the inefficient utilization of resources. If you take that kind of data scenario and translate it to a corporate scale, it becomes massively magnified and wastes a huge amount of natural resources.

How do you think this might change the world?

Datadobi’s approach to these urgent unstructured data management challenges is important because it helps to build awareness and makes companies face their levels of resource consumption and the impact it is having in real-time. Our ethos is also about helping people take responsibility and ownership for their resource consumption and then take the appropriate action so it is as small as it needs to be. These technologies and human resources can then be redirected to focus on much bigger problems, such as saving the planet.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks of this technology that people should think more deeply about?

The main drawback is that it is confrontational, which might help people think about changing their strategy and behavior. Part of the problem with humanity is the need we have to be at the edge of the cliff before we understand the depth of a problem and act to direct it. With StorageMAP itself, I don’t see any drawbacks, just benefits, such as the reduction in the use of natural resources, alongside the ability to redirect skills and technology to help solve urgent global challenges, such as climate change.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

First, you need to understand the problem you are trying to solve and how that problem impacts both society and nature in the short and long term. For instance, ecosystems have been tuned for millennia, and we need to understand them holistically before trying to solve every problem that affects them. Consider the impact of CFCs, which caused the hole within the ozone layer. The initial solution to the problems CFCs addressed wasn’t considered holistically, and not enough thought was given to the drawbacks. Similarly, the use of PFAS chemicals on soil for the last 20 to 30 years has created a big problem that needs to be solved. Originally, PFAS was a solution for all kinds of challenges but was implemented without considering its impact on nature, and now we are paying the price.

Next, whenever you create technology or a solution, you need to make sure people care about it. Don’t create technologies that just consume resources and don’t deliver a positive net return for society and nature.

Third, make sure that whatever solution you make interconnects people and serves society and not just a happy few.

You also need to create something sustainable that supports a cradle-to-cradle approach. Being able to decompose a piece of technology back to its original components so it can be absorbed by nature is ethically important so technology doesn’t abuse the planet.

Finally, do your due diligence so that whatever you build doesn’t create repetitive work that adds no value. People often design solutions to solve a problem, but in doing so, also create repetitive jobs and tasks that are not suited for the human brain. The human brain can do a lot of interesting things, and everyone’s brain should be trained accordingly so we can leave all the tasks that can be automated to the appropriate technology.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

An interesting quote I always remember is: “We have not inherited the land from our brothers and sisters, we borrowed it from our children.” We have to be honest in that we’ve got the planet in bad shape, but also, we are the only species that has the capability to solve these problems. Either we fix it and help everyone, or nature will take action and reset. This starts with each individual being aware of that responsibility because change starts with each one of us. The good thing is I see a lot of that behavior in young people — kids are very aware of the situation and are asking how they can cope with it.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why?

Jeff Bezos, of course, just to be able to pick his brain and understand the way he thinks. I would also love to sit down with Bill Gates to discuss some of the climate change initiatives he has championed, as well as what he has planned next with his climate investment fund.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.