Success Stories

Tiger Technology: We want to build the next generation of tech leaders

“We are looking for people to learn and grow with us. This is the right approach to ensure our technology leadership for the future,” shared Alexander Lefterov, founder and CEO of Tiger Technology. 

The company, part of the Telerik Academy partner network, plays a key role in some industries like Surveillance, Media and Entertainment, Healthcare, and more. Among its clients are NASA and the Pentagon. We were eager to learn more about working with such large government enterprises, why investing in junior talent is important and what differentiates our Alpha students.

Keep reading to find the answers!

Meet Alexander Lefterov and Tiger Technology

Alexander Lefterov is the founder and CEO of Tiger Technology. He has a Master's in Computer science and is a serial entrepreneur. He co-founded six non-tech startups in advertising, post-production, digital printing, digital signature, retail, and real estate, and seven tech startups focused on VoIP, aerospace engineering, outsourcing, non-linear editing, video collaboration, shared storage solutions, and sports analytics. 

Two of the seven are still active, and three were successful technology exits.

But let's focus on our partner Tiger Technology. The company was founded in 2003 to bring high-performance storage management solutions to the most demanding workflows - including the aforementioned, Surveillance, Media and Entertainment, Healthcare and other industries of that magnitude.

"Not long ago, the major market players focused on providing solutions that shift customer data into the cloud. The migration of on-premises workflows to cloud workflows is not smooth, and despite increased adoption, only 9.1% of total enterprise IT spending goes on cloud computing," shared Alexander Lefterov.

According to him, there are five main reasons for that, including compliance, legacy applications, cost (could be more expensive over a more extended period), business model and fear of the unknown and misunderstanding of the cloud. 

"Speaking of compliance, there is a possibility that the cloud simply doesn't support some workflows in traditional industries," added Alexander Lefterov, but for him, the most significant barrier to cloud adoption is the legacy applications - "they don't have the concept of accessing object storage in the cloud."

Today, the Tiger Technology team is of around 50 professionals with over 15 years of storage expertise and a "true passion for developing high-performance storage solutions for the most demanding workflows," as Alexander Lefterov explained.

Tiger Technology’s solution

As a result, Tiger Technology understands that “Cloud first“ doesn’t work for industries that execute mission-critical workflows over sensitive data.

“Our approach is on-premise-first (OPF), which enables data & storage management in such workflows and allows data to grow via cloud adoption over cloud migration. That is providing organizations to use the undisputed benefits of the Cloud without disrupting their existing workflows and smoothen their overall cloud transformation.”

The OPF approach was first introduced in 2017 when Tiger Technology partner IBM was looking to enable one of the largest airports in the world to scale its video surveillance operations to multiple petabytes of data.

“That’s when IBM turned to our first-rate engineering team for help addressing compatibility with cloud storage. This set us on a path toward building our hybrid cloud data management solution, Surveillance Bridge.”

Today, the company is helping many customers to solve their hybrid workflow dilemma with a focus on the efficient and non-disruptive blending of on-premises and cloud storage.

Working with clients such as NASA and the Pentagon

“Large government enterprises never trust small, unknown, foreign entities… with one notable exception. Only when they realize that someone is holding a key technology that solves a big enough problem for them, they are willing to go outside the circle of their trusted vendors and explore other options,” said the Tiger Technology CEO.

This has been the case with his company and many companies worldwide. He explained that once you convince the clients that you have the right technology and you can follow the established enterprise rules of engagement, they become your regular customers.

Furthermore, there is one other significant upside of working with clients such as NASA and the Pentagon - they don’t switch technologies quickly, so they are likely to become a very long-term customers.

And Alexander Lefterov had the perfect example for this. 

“It has been almost 15 years since our software has been deployed in certain US Submarines and is likely to remain there until they are retired. The unique, cutting-edge technology is always the entry pass for large enterprises.”

The importance of junior talent

As always, we could hardly wait for our favorite question - what role does the junior talent have in the company? How important it is to invest in young talent freshly graduated from the Telerik Academy Alpha programs.

For Tiger Technology, junior talent solves one big disadvantage for the company. “Being a pioneer in the tech world, it’s hard to find and acquire experienced talent in the particular field - it simply doesn’t exist,” Alexander Lefterov explained. 

The solution is to build your own experts from well-prepared junior talent.

“While we are getting the necessary share of senior talent to bring broad experience, we are looking for people to learn and grow with us. Those people are typically open-minded and eager to grow junior staff at the beginning of their professional journey. While this presents us the challenge of teaching and integrating them over a long time, we believe this is the right approach to ensure our technology leadership for the future.”

Alexander Lefterov on choosing Telerik Academy as a bridge to master junior talent

“Telerik Academy maintains high standards in preparing its students for their future work. We highly appreciate that the Academy is paying attention to technical skills, soft skills, and teamwork. This benefits both parties, as the integration process is shorter and lighter. We value that the graduates have an excellent basis regarding technical knowledge and expectations about their role in a company, which makes things easier for everyone.”

What is next for Tiger Technology?

Digital Cloud Transformation is a trend that will continue to shape the IT world and will present challenges for technology companies to solve. 

Companies just like Tiger Technology. 

For Alexander Lefterov, the next step for his team is to make up for the lost time during the slowdown caused by COVID. A process that, according to him, is going with rapid speed.

“Tiger Technology is expecting to rapidly grow in multiple verticals over the next few years, with the main ones being Video Surveillance, Healthcare, Media and Entertainment and General IT.”

Are you looking to jumpstart your career in IT? Find out more about our Telerik Academy Alpha programs. Are you a company seeking Master Junior talent? Then go through our business page or contact us directly.

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