Elastic's CEO Ash Kulkarni unveils vision for the future: Generative AI, data simplification, and more.
In January 2022, Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack, made a significant announcement, promoting Ashutosh (Ash) Kulkarni to the role of CEO.
He succeeded Founder and CEO, Shay Banon, who transitioned to Chief Technology Officer, focusing on innovation, product development, and shaping the company’s culture.
This transition marked a pivotal moment in Elastic’s journey, led by a leader known for his empathetic and focused leadership style.
“Shay’s move was a bit of a surprise. But it’s been a wonderful journey. The transition was easy, because I got to continue working with the same team that I had worked with as the head of products and engineering,” says Ash.
Ash, who had previously served as Chief Product Officer since January 2021, played a pivotal role in orchestrating Elastic’s strategic transformation. He has been the visionary architect behind Elastic’s growing emphasis on its cloud business, with a particular focus on solutions spanning Observability, Security, and Enterprise Search.
Architecting Elastic’s future: A CEO’s vision
Ash unveiled the core areas that have been capturing his attention since taking the helm.
His first and foremost focus is on Generative AI, which according to him, holds the key to transforming businesses and enhancing user experiences. He believes that Generative AI has the power to unlock a massive potential that can revolutionize how search operates in the business world.
“This isn’t just about improving user experience; it’s about optimizing the efficiency of business processes,” Ash says.
Simplifying data management through the cloud is his other priority. Ash is passionate about simplifying the way customers interact with their data through Elastic’s cloud service.
“The beauty of the cloud lies in its ability to alleviate the operational burden on practitioners and users. Elastic has established robust relationships with all three major hyperscale cloud providers, and this partnership is a significant area of focus,” Ash says.
Another critical domain for him is the convergence of observability and security. Ash recognizes that the data involved in these areas is very similar, and the practices are rapidly converging.
“We aim to enable businesses to leverage their operational machine data for ensuring system uptime and safeguarding against cyber threats,” Ash says.
Ash’s vision for Elastic transcends geographical boundaries. He aspires for Elastic to become the AI-powered search analytics platform that empowers customers globally to unlock the full potential of their data. In a world where data is king, the company wants to be looked at as the guiding force that helps businesses harness the true promise of their data.
As our conversation progressed, Ash shared insights into how enterprises embark on their journey with Elastic, shedding light on the strategic approach employed by both Elastic and its diverse customer base.
Diverse entry points
Elastic acknowledges that enterprises do not follow a one-size-fits-all approach when adopting its solutions. Ash highlighted three distinct pathways through which enterprises initiate their journey with Elastic:
The first path, labeled the “Search-Centric Start,” sees enterprises leveraging Elastic’s robust search capabilities. As they delve into this area, the broader potential of Elastic’s platform becomes evident, propelling them toward embracing observability and security use cases.
For the second group of enterprises, observability takes precedence. These organizations, despite potentially having never employed Elastic for search, recognize its capabilities in log management that can help them identify and resolve issues within their applications through log analysis. They harness Elastic’s capabilities for log analysis to swiftly identify and address issues within their applications.
The third pathway is anchored in a security-first approach. Some enterprises prioritize cybersecurity right from the beginning, capitalizing on Elastic’s features to enhance their Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions or, in some instances, implementing Elastic as their primary SIEM for effectively managing security operations. Each of these paths offers organizations an entry point to Elastic’s multifaceted capabilities, catering to their specific needs and objectives.
“Elastic’s growth strategy follows a land-and-expand model. This approach simplifies the initial adoption of Elastic’s solutions for customers, enabling them to start with a single use case and then seamlessly expand into multiple areas. The adaptability of our platform allows customers to transition effortlessly from one use case to another, promoting a consolidated approach that has proven highly successful for Elastic,” Ash says.
Ash provided insights into the distribution of Elastic’s business across these three key areas.
Currently, Observability contributes approximately 40% of Elastic’s business, followed by Search at 35%, and Cybersecurity at slightly over 25%. These figures may vary over time, but Elastic’s model remains adaptable, driven by market dynamics.
Generative AI: Transforming data
The topic of Generative AI and its profound impact on data management now takes center stage in our conversation. The discussion revolved around the transformative potential of generative AI and the role Elastic plays in bridging the gap between large language models (LLMs) and private business data.
Ash emphasized the monumental progress in generative AI, exemplified by models like ChatGPT, which can engage in extended conversations and generate content.
“However, these AI models, such as GPT-4 and Google’s Bard, are primarily trained on publicly available data, lacking insights into a business’s proprietary information,” Ash says.
To harness the potential of LLMs for applications like enhancing e-commerce experiences or improving customer support, Elastic has introduced the concept of Retrieval Augmented Generation or RAG. When a query is posed to a large language model, it is sent to Elastic to inquire about relevant information within the business’s data context.
“Elastic swiftly searches through the data, providing precise and contextually accurate responses in real time, avoiding the problem of hallucination often associated with generative AI. Moreover, this approach ensures data privacy and security, as only the relevant information is shared, and it is transmitted in the form of vectors, reinforcing a privacy-first approach,” Ash says.
Ash shares a compelling use case from Cisco, a customer that showcased its success story at the Google Next event and Elastic ON, an AI conference in San Francisco. Cisco aimed to enhance customer support by empowering support engineers to efficiently access vast amounts of information within their organization, including product details, codebases, customer data, and known ticket information. With Elastic’s solution, they could swiftly identify pertinent information in real-time to respond to customer queries, significantly reducing response times.
“This not only elevated the customer experience but also streamlined the company’s operations, exemplifying the dual benefits of generative AI,” Ash says.
Elastic and AWS partnership: A win-win for customers
CEO Ashutosh Kulkarni accepts the award on stage with the Elastic and Google Cloud partner team
The conversation delved into Elastic’s unique partnership with AWS, considering their fraught history. Once characterized by a complex relationship, they have now evolved into close allies. Ash highlighted the significance of prioritizing customer needs in fostering successful collaborations.
Ash’s perspective on partnerships revolved around a central tenet: “when the customer’s interests are paramount, everyone stands to benefit. The key to a thriving partnership is to eliminate any friction from the system.
Customers should seamlessly discover, purchase, and use products and services without obstacles. Furthermore, obtaining the necessary support and services should be a frictionless experience,” he says.
Elastic’s commitment to aligning with hyperscale cloud providers stems from this customer-centric ethos. Ash pointed out that establishing the right relationships is critical. Elastic has cultivated strong partnerships with Microsoft and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), culminating in prestigious awards such as the GCP Technology Partner of the Year, a notable achievement given a different company’s historical dominance.
Regarding the partnership with AWS, Ash underscored that AWS, like other hyperscalers, recognizes the value of collaborating with innovators like Elastic. While Elastic’s DNA is rooted in data, data also holds immense importance for AWS, shaping their infrastructure and cloud services. Ash expressed his pride in the progress made in this partnership, highlighting the dedication of both teams to ensure a seamless and fruitful collaboration.
My take:
Through this interaction with Ash, it does look like the future of Elastic shines brightly, driven by visionary leadership. The company is moving forward with innovation, adaptability, and customer-centricity as the key themes.
With a strategic focus on Generative AI, data simplification, and the convergence of observability and security, Elastic wants to be at the forefront of the data management revolution. The company looks to be uniquely positioned to benefit from AI workloads with search being at the forefront of AI. Whether it will emerge as a game-changer in the data management landscape, making it possible for organizations worldwide to unlock the full potential of their data, remains to be seen.
