- Surprisingly, many large companies still manage their data with spreadsheets
- But spreadsheets are difficult for people to reorganize on the fly, merge with other spreadsheets and scale with constant incorporations of new data
- OneVizion solved this problem many years ago with its Linked Record Architecture
At one point it was ridiculous how many Silicon Valley startups claimed they were in “stealth mode,” meaning they weren’t yet ready to make their public debut. Sadly, many of these startups didn’t survive. But OneVizion has been in stealth mode for its entire 20-plus-year existence. And it’s got a roster of gold-plated customers such as T-Mobile, UScellular, Rogers Communications and Samsung. Yet, its founders built the business by word-of-mouth and reputation and just never felt the need to make a media splash.
Now, OneVizion is ready to become more visible.
The company, based in Marietta, Georgia, got its start doing microwave backhaul links for Clearwire, at one point managing 20,000 links for the wireless provider. OneVizion CEO John Patton told Fierce Network, “There’s not a cell tower you drive by in the U.S. that our technology has not been used by somebody.” He said OneVizion has facilitated T-Mobile’s build of 125,000 5G sites since December 2020.
In the early 2000s, OneVizion started helping its clients to manage their company inventory and other assets and track processes and tasks. Patton said that service providers and other enterprises have been struggling for decades to manage data that they’ve collected in Excel spreadsheets and also in other database software such as Access, SQL Server, Oracle and Salesforce. So, OneVizion came up with its Linked Record Architecture as a solution. Patton likes to say that the company solves “data misery.”
In a recent Fierce Network webinar, Patton said, “We find the vast majority of the intellectual property that companies have is still in spreadsheets.”
He explained that data in spreadsheets is stored as records within tables. Each record is at the intersection of a row and a column. Some customers have data that is 90 billion records deep. “We just manage the row,” said Patton. “That’s called the Linked Record, and what we do is we highly index that row so that you can go and build a spreadsheet out of it. And so that's how we build a column.”
OneVizion’s software can handle billions of records and still allow new data types and relationships to be added quickly. “We can add a new tracking element in a minute,” said Patton.
“You know how long it takes to add a new tracking element in a mature enterprise database? he asked. "Probably two to three weeks.”
Another benefit is that OneVizion’s software doesn’t require any programming skills. So, business users can manage and analyze data without relying on IT teams.
Asked how Linked Record is different than data management software such as Tableau and SAS, Patton said those platforms just present the data to you. “You can’t make a change to those things,” he said. “You want a system to be scalable. And it’s got to be flexible.”
Patton said the Linked Record Architecture was first developed in 2003 and turned on for Clearwire in 2007. “We’ve been perfecting it ever since,” he said.
Why didn’t the company talk about it? Patton said it was because of the fear of patent trolls. If OneVizion had filed a patent, it could have suffered needless litigation from patent trolls. But now that the technology has been around for 20 years, it’s OneVizion’s trade secret, and it’s considered “prior art” by the U.S. Patent Office, so no one can sue OneVizion or block its use of the technology.
FiberVizion
Recently, OneVizion has developed new software called FiberVizion to help companies track their fiber builds and processes.
Patton said companies need “journey solutions,” which help them start a project — such as a fiber build — and go through the whole process of hundreds of tasks. FiberVizion software will support them from their request for proposal, to design, material sourcing, construction, testing and commissioning.
FiberVizion is already deployed by SummitIG, a service provider in Virginia. “And some of our bigger contracts are using it,” said Patton.