Introducing DataArt Labs: Hubs for Driving Differentiated Value in a New Era of IT

Yeah, it is not, and it is based on our experience and how we used to work with our clients, how we used to innovate. It's the next very logical step in the same journey.

Yes, of course. So for many years we used to have a number of centers of excellence, centers of competency, and professional communities. They had different structures, they used to work maybe with different agendas and objectives. And we realized that we have certain examples of groups that work very well and they deliver high-quality insights, prototypes. They have a very good understanding of what's out there on the technology perspective. And we realized, yeah, let's reuse these best practices and let's invest more. Let's build something bigger than what we have now. So it's an evolution of our center of excellence and competences into labs. This is revitalizing those communities that were looking for inspiration, and this is enablement of those communities that were already in a good shape. We just give them more autonomy to do a little more.

Yeah, this is—you see what you just did. Naming is one of the biggest problems in IT. And with Labs, we want to have something short, something that will actually deliver value and explain what it is, and does not sound too formal, too complicated. And yeah, there's something that has to address the name, the purpose, without being synthetically too scientific, for example, or to be very formal.

Yes, it is. So how it happened before—and even we as a company, we help our clients to design and shape. We provide this advisory and consultancy so our clients can build their own centers of excellence internally, around cloud, around AI in particular. And in many examples, in many organizations, these groups are tasked with internal operational problems. First of all, our labs, they are different. And in the trajectory, what is happening in the industry is those groups that for some time were working on addressing questions are now in position to actually look into what's out there, what are the trends, what is emerging. And this is just the next step in the evolution.

So yeah, regarding experts, yes, our Labs—these are groups where experts work, they grow, and we get them together so they have this community to discuss their problems, challenges, to talk to clients and represent what we know. They still stand behind how we work with clients. But there are certain new components. First of all, I already mentioned autonomy several times. We recognize that certain labs are so technologically advanced and they have a lot of expertise in real projects, in real life. They are in the position to actually talk to other companies, establish partnership relationships with them—whether it's product, whether it's platform companies—and to work on problems together.

Examples? Sure, of course. So look into our Cloud, for example—Cloud and DevOps. This is one of the labs that we have. This group has a relationship with a company called Harness, and this is a partnership relationship. Meaning that we work with the company to understand what's out there, what is coming, what are the best practices in the field, and how a product company like Harness, with multiple products and tools in their portfolio, how they look at the market and how they talk to clients. We run POCs, we work on joint materials together, we host workshops. And then when we approach our clients, Harness might be one of the tools that we have blueprints with. This is something that we can very easily start, and we can bring both the technology and the expertise of integrating and implementing solutions on top of it. We also invest heavily into prototyping and research ourselves. We can run multiple different R&Ds in parallel at the same time, compare results, and then when clients come to these labs, we're not starting from scratch. We already have context, we already have numbers, we already have results that we can show. If there are certain requirements or questions from the client, before diving into another R&D or research, we can actually evaluate—we've already done it—and maybe this changes the upcoming research or the challenge.

New or existing clients are welcome, but I would also encourage that partners can also work with our Labs. Because of course every company is developing something new, and our labs are in the position to actually match the ideas with what we see on the market. At the same time, engineers and experts—we think about Labs as a place where individuals can grow. This is our way to accumulate the best, the smartest. And it's not only for clients or partners or business context. It is also for engineers and future leaders to join the company, to actually join these labs and be in the environment that they like, that they want to work with, be on the bleeding edge of technology and drive their thought leadership. So it's both targeted at external and internal customers in a way. I was talking about POCs and technology and research during this interview, but sometimes the technology is not the most complex problem. Sometimes it is processes, the legacy, it is about people and how to manage the project. Certain labs are not about coding and change requests and blueprints. Some of our labs are built around the excellence in how we actually drive complex projects and programs—methodologies, lessons learned, and tools that we can use when we work with clients in different complex settings, whether it's an enterprise with many different departments and competing interests, whether it's an emerging company that has a lot of opportunities and needs to focus on something. We can talk about product development, we can talk about how we drive these programs, and we also have labs for that. So it's not only about the techie part, it's also about the secret sauce of how to do a project. So in a way, Labs is an answer to the fact that technology is becoming commoditized, and it's not really a question about what technology exactly you're using—it's how it fits the business process and how it answers the business challenges. It is true, and there is always a beginning. Every project has milestones and an end. And what's happening in between is what makes DataArt different and unique. We try to put together our thoughts on best practices, what we learn from similar engagements, to ensure the success of these relationships.