Function1
Delivering Unrivaled Expertise in Enterprise Technology

While the flexible nature of enterprise software is an advantage for organizations with different business processes, it also leads to complexities in both user interface and deployment processes. Function1, founded in 2007, simplifies these complexities by providing enterprise software solutions in these practice areas: Operational Intelligence, Web Experience Management, Storage, and Security. Ashish Bhutiani, Founder and CEO of Function1, states, “Function1 cost-effectively guides customers through enterprise technology deployments using innovative solutions, and expert staff.”

Function1 partnered with Red Hat in early 2014 to build the Red Hat Storage (RHS) App for Splunk. Red Hat Storage Server is an open, software-defined storage platform that provides cost-effective storage for extremely large, historical data sets. This product brought market focus to Function1 as a software solutions provider in the Big Data ecosystem. “Our partnership with Red Hat has opened the door to numerous technology vendors who leverage us to build value-added Splunk apps for their products,” says Bhutiani.

As an Advanced Red Hat partner Function1 is currently the only partner with mastery in Big Data within the Splunk ecosystem as well as storage certifications within the RHS ecosystem. “Our unparalleled knowledge of Splunk and intimate involvement in the production of the RHS App for Splunk Enterprise gave us the unique opportunity to work with RHS Product Marketing and Product Management. Together we have carved out a space for Red Hat Storage in the Splunk ecosystem by creating a Hybrid Storage Solution for Splunk Enterprise,” says Bhutiani. This innovative Hybrid model drastically reduces the total cost of ownership for any Splunk customer by applying the strengths of Red Hat Storage Server to the growing storage needs of Splunk customers. Function1 has also delivered multiple campaigns with Red Hat along with white papers, blogs, and various social media mentions to promote the availability of this solution.

In addition, Function1 offers organizations visibility into their own business operations through their Operational Intelligence (OI) team. Their highly specialized staff has repeatedly converted extensive amounts of machine-generated data into profitable business insight. Function1’s partnership with Splunk guarantees the consistent delivery of reports, alerts, and dashboards that capture, index, and correlate real-time data. This real-time data generates graphs, reports, alerts, and visualizations customized for each client’s business and technical needs. Being an early partner with Splunk (since 2011), Function1 has a significant advantage compared to other solutions providers that have recently entered the market.

Guided by a motto "to never be complacent", Function1 seeks for “continuous improvement” when it comes to attending to both employee and customer needs. “Everyday we strive to improve on both our clients’ and employees’ lives. To that end, we are constantly reviewing the tools and technologies that we use to make sure they are an appropriate for our company and our clients,” reveals Bhutiani.

Function1 continues to provide innovative solutions for their growing client base, while keeping abreast of the latest potential technologies that will help their customers. They have expanded from working with one piece of software when they were founded in 2007 (Oracle WebCenter Interaction) to being recognized experts in four major enterprise software products (Splunk, Red Hat Storage Server, Oracle WebCenter Sites, and Drupal). While they are constantly on the lookout for new technologies to add to their services, don’t expect them to just jump into a new technology. “We are very deliberate about expanding into new technologies. We know that clients expect a deep level of product expertise from Function1 consultants and we want to make sure we meet those expectations as we grow and expand,” Bhutiani added.

In the early 1990s, I was a software consultant with Digital Equipment Corporation, an influential computer company in its day. At one of our semi-annual VMS Partner meetings, I had the privilege of listening to a presentation from a software visionary named David Stone about a revolutionary concept he called the “Information Utility.” Stone was vice-president of software products and hemade a case that within a generation, nobody other than maybe the Pentagon would operate private data centers.

Instead, everyone would connect devices to an information grid. Information utility companies would deliver data services over this grid, just like electricity.

In an era before smartphones, before anyone besides a few researchers had ever heard of the world wide web, before cloud became a popular word, before IoT became a popular acronym, Stone’s presentation was right out of Star Trek. It opened my mind to a whole new world of possibilities. Followed by a world of security concerns.

Today, we don’t have warp drive yet, but much of Stone’s information utility vision is here. Cloud services are everywhere andIoT is coming. Open source communities are leading the way, with companies like Red Hat contributing major engineering talent around projects such as RHEL, RHEV, OpenStack, CloudForms, and others. The pace of innovation is amazing, and accelerating.

Function1 works closely with every customer to fully understand their unique needs and leverages industry-leading software and unrivaled product expertise to provide solutions that solves those needs, deploys faster and costs less, with the added bonus of advanced usability