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SHAHAR FOGEL, CEO OF ROOKOUT - INTERVIEW WITH WBM TOP 100 INNOVATION CEO
SHAHAR FOGEL, CEO OF ROOKOUT HAS BEEN SELECTED BY THE JUDGES OF WORLD BIZ MAGAZINE'S ANNUAL AWARDS TO BE A RECIPIENT OF THE TOP 100 CEOS IN INNOVATION AWARD 2021.
THIS SELECTION FOLLOWS A STRINGENT PROCESS THAT EVALUATED OVER 40,000 NOMINEES TO SELECT THE EXCLUSIVE LIST OF 100 WINNERS.
Shahar Fogel is the CEO of Rookout. He has spent the last 2 decades leading data-driven businesses, products, and R&D teams, from early-stage start-ups to government organizations. Shahar is passionate about software architecture and observability; as a cyber Security team lead, product manager, VC investor, and a Cambridge University MBA alumni.
"Our primary vision for Rookout is to enable developers and engineering organizations to have constant on-demand access to their code-level data. There is no reason that software engineers should have to have all of the answers in advance, especially as it’s not realistic at cloud scale."
Share with us some of the major successes at Rookout over the last year.
Rookout has surpassed the $1million ARR mark and continues to grow (from $0 in sales 12 months ago). We have managed to bring amazing customers to our client base, who are using Rookout on a very frequent basis and driving significant value to their engineering departments. Some of them include Adobe, Cisco, Informatica, Amdocs, Nice, Santander Bank, Playtika, and dozens more of amazing enterprises.
What is your vision for Rookout?
Our primary vision for Rookout is to enable developers and engineering organizations to have constant on-demand access to their code-level data. There is no reason that software engineers should have to have all of the answers in advance, especially as it’s not realistic at cloud scale. There are so many unknowns when writing code and there will always be new things that come up that couldn’t have been predicted. With real-time solutions such as Rookout’s Live Debugger and Live Logger, teams will always have the ability to get the data they need, when they need it.
"Rookout was built from the ground up as a solution that allows developers to instantly access the code-level data they need in order to troubleshoot and understand complex, modern applications with no extra coding, redeployments, or restarts. From the start, Rookout has been changing the way developers work and helping them to become faster and more efficient."
Talk to us about innovation at Rookout.
At Rookout (as cliche as it may sound) innovation is truly the name of the game. Rookout was built from the ground up as a solution that allows developers to instantly access the code-level data they need in order to troubleshoot and understand complex, modern applications with no extra coding, redeployments, or restarts. From the start, Rookout has been changing the way developers work and helping them to become faster and more efficient with our Live Debugger. Innovating and creating new and better workflows is - and has always been - the goal at Rookout, which led us to create our Live Logger.
At Rookout, we constantly strive to create better tools that will transform the way things are done, for the better.
How do you ensure your solutions stand out in the market?
When developing software, the majority of a developer’s time consists of trying to get to the right data in order to understand what is happening in their application. They have to resort to adding many log lines, measuring additional metrics, attaching a debugger to running live processes, tracing methods, attempting to reproduce the problem on their local machines, and other such time-consuming, costly, cumbersome, and difficult methods. These methods prove to be a source of big frustration - and time and resource waste - for developers, and can take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, depending on the company.
These challenges, frustrations, and time waste grew dramatically as technology has been progressively moving towards cloud-based and web-based technologies and architectures. With the development of web apps in microservices, containers, and serverless technologies those same web apps are now running with multiple instances and code versions that are constantly shifting. Things like debugging locally, reproducing errors, or tracking user requests between asynchronous modules are getting too complex and almost impossible.
However, while technology has improved, a developer’s understanding and ability to work within it hasn’t. Instead, software engineers face a greater lack of observability, understanding, and insight than what they previously had with simpler technologies. Rookout’s Live Debugger and Live Logger were created to fill this gap and need and were built specifically to face modern application architecture and remedy this challenge by bringing a new and disruptive debugging solution that empowers developers to gain instant insight into their software. The deep cybersecurity background that we have at Rookout allows us to practice dynamic instrumentation that is made possible via bytecode manipulation, which other logging and APM vendors simply can’t do. These solutions make it simpler for developers to get the debugging data they need from their code in order to troubleshoot issues faster.
How is Rookout elevating your industry?
Rookout is elevating the industry by enabling developers to troubleshoot their code instantly.
Previously, when developing software, the majority of a developer’s time had consisted of trying to get to the right data in order to understand what is happening in their application. They had to resort to adding many log lines, measuring additional metrics, attaching a debugger to running live processes, tracing methods, attempting to reproduce the problem on their local machines, and other such time-consuming, costly, cumbersome, and difficult methods. These methods proved to be a source of big frustration - and time and resource waste - for developers, and could take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, depending on the company.
By using Rookout, developers can gain insight into their applications and understand what’s happening, in parallel to their application running, and without stopping or breaking anything. This allows them to develop higher-quality code, faster.
"The world as we knew it has changed, and with it has brought a rise in digitalization of everything. It’s become crucial for companies - and their R&D teams - to be able to develop quality code, fast, in order to deliver the best customer experience."
Why is your approach of critical importance?
The world as we knew it has changed, and with it has brought a rise in digitalization of everything. It’s become crucial for companies - and their R&D teams - to be able to develop quality code, fast, in order to deliver the best customer experience.
At Rookout, our primary vision is to enable developers and engineering organizations to focus on building rather than fixing, whilst having constant on-demand access to their code-level data. There are so many unknowns when writing code and there will always be new things that come up that couldn’t have been predicted. With real-time solutions, teams will always have the ability to get the data they need, when they need it.
What technologies do you expect will transform business in the coming decade?
Cloud technologies have allowed us to achieve scale in an unprecedented way. The challenges, frustrations, and time waste of developing software (fruitless searches for data, long redeployments, etc) grew dramatically as technology has been progressively moving towards cloud-based technologies and architectures. While the platforms have evolved, a developer’s understanding and ability to work within them hasn’t. Instead, software engineers face a greater lack of observability, understanding, and insight than what they previously had with simpler technologies.
Cloud technologies have allowed us to scale up and work dynamically to create and deliver the best technologies possible. For example, we built Rookout’s Live Debugger and Live Logger specifically to face modern application architecture challenges and resolve them by empowering developers to employ - and work with - cloud technologies to gain instant insight into their software, making it simpler for them to get the data they need from their code in order to troubleshoot issues faster.
What makes a good leader?
The combination of managing and recruiting the best talent, a deep understanding of the market, the product, and the pain that the company is solving, as well as the ability to drive a good story and sell your product and vision to many stakeholders (future employees, potential customers, and investors).
About Rookout
Decouple data from code: When running code in production you are constantly trying to figure out what your code is actually doing and why. Even though it’s your code, running on your servers, there’s no easy way to see what’s going on. You have to write more code, test it, approve it, deploy it, and only then do you get a new sliver of data. We’re here to change that.
It’s time to liberate your data. It’s what we do.
