Remarks on ZYLK’s trajectory and its participation in the EDI Incubator program
David Olmos is an Spanish Entrepreneur with more than 15 years experience in the IT sector. Co-founder of ZYLK, investor in Brokerstars, leading the R&D and strategic development of the business as CEO. Active within the OSS (Open Source Software) community, with Sinadura, as co-founder and head of business development or working strategically through associations such as ESLE (Basque Open Software Association) and ASOLIF (Spanish National Open Software Association) to further develop projects in this sector and to advise on public policy. Other aspects of his work life include inter-cultural artistic projects as MovingArtists.
Can you tell us how the idea for your startup began?
In July 2004, ZYLK began as a technology-based company founded by a group of graduates and doctorates from the Faculty of Physical Sciences (UPV / EHU), with concerns and capabilities around open software. Leading the Spanish federation of opensource software companies during more than 7 years.
In 2015 Zylk Industry was born due to the participation in the Basque Industry 4.0 acceleration program (BIND 4.0), where we obtained an important consultancy contract with ITP Aero, analyzing the data of Fanuc’s robots to obtain more efficiency decision and cost savings, now ITP Aero part of Rolls Royce Group is currently one of our main customers. After that we focus on Industry 4.0 developing on demand solution for Ulma, Orona, Euskatel or ArcelorMittal in addition we have won some smartcities tenders and became IBM and Hortonworks’s partners.
The next stage for Zylk Industry is to go towards a product-based business model and we decided to apply to EDI and face the Volkswagen challenge.
How long have you been working together?
The CTO, Gustavo Fernandez and me David Olmos the CEO, have been sharing several Business (Zylk, ESLE, ASOLIF, Brokerstars), opensource (Sinadura Digital Signature project) and cultural and artistic (MovingArtists) projects for more than 15 years.
What are you really passionate about achieving?
To start from scratch and build a solution than can be spreadly used. It is really nice to show the world that there are new ways for doing business and having new technical challenges to face. Industry is part of the Basque Country history ans soul and now IT and BigData comes to enhance our strengths and we can evidence this around the world, betting for opensource models and BigData technologies.
It will be a great achievement to contribute to make European Automotive Industry grow up faster than others and lead the world market using Zylk Industry’s products and skills.
Who is in your team? Where are you all from and what backgrounds do you have?
We have an extraordinary team and also we expect to complete it with other profiles as soon as this startup grows up. The foundation team has brilliant minds, wide technical skills and years of business experience.
David Olmos, studied in Physics at Basque University and got an EMBA by ESIC in Madrid.+ 15 years experience in the IT. Entrepreneur and co-founder of zylk.net or investor Brokerstars, as CEO, CRO, CHRO, CMO and CFO. Also is been mentor of several companies at Finodex European OpenData Incubator. Active within the OSS ecosystem and Spanish and European Open source associations, and organizing events to promote opensource in Spain, Germany and France such as Librecon by Cebit.
Gustavo Fernández, graduated in Physics by the University of Zaragoza, + 15 years of experience. He took a Master’s degree in Network, Telematic services and Internet at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). He is the COO and CTO of projects related to JAVA software development. His expertise also covers methodologies like CMMI, SCRUM and Metrica3. During the last four years he has managed the Industry 4.0 and Big Data Business area. He is certified by Hortonworks as Developer and architect.
Irantzu Calvo is a Doctor in Physics. She has 6 years of experience on advanced analytics and the the computation of complex numerical simulations, having worked at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and KU Leuven (Belgium) as a researcher. She has supervised Master students and she has taught at the mathematics department of the university. This makes her capable of leading groups and fluently interact with other R&D groups within the Industry 4.0. She is also familiar with the Spanish and European research funding programs. Due to this, she is the R&D manager at Zylk. She is also the responsible of carrying out the complex analytics our clients require, including deep learning algorithms.
Alejandro Rodríguez is graduated with a BSc in Telecommunication Technology Engineering (Sound and Image Specialization), from the University of Deusto. He worked as Research Intern in DeustoTech-Life department. He has been working as BigData and Data Analysis Developer. The projects have been carried out for ICT companies, such as telco companies. He has experience in projects based in J2EE Environment, as well as Open-Source technologies for Big Data, having worked with tools as HBase, Nifi and Kafka, to name few. He is certified in Hortonworks Big Data platform (HCA, Hortonworks Certified Associate).
What challenge have you selected for the EDI incubation programme and why did you choose it?
Our EDI challenge is the “Predictive maintenance models for industrial robots in body shop” proposed by Volkwagen Navarra. It aims to develop a Big Data solution for monitoring the KUKA robots in their plant, in order to either make a predictive maintenance of the robots and optimize their production processes. This challenge is of great interest for Zylk since we have been focused on the digitalization of industrial processes, the so called Industry 4.0, and therefore this challenge is the best suited for our target market. Moreover, Volkswagen is one of the most important automotive companies in the world, which is a great opportunity to gain visibility in the market through the success of the project and work to disseminate our solutions in all their plants and in other automotive industry customers.
What are you most excited about taking part in the incubation programme?
EDI is bringing us the opportunity to develop a high quality product suitable for big companies, such as our data provider Volkswagen Navarra. This, in addition to the expected growth in brand awareness within the European market, makes this challenge our opportunity to become a product based company open not just to the Spanish market, but also to the European one. Hence, Zylk will experience an economical significant grow. Moreover, we will meet other companies during the EDI’s phases, which will allow us to identify our direct European competitors.
What unique aspects does Zylk have to offer the big data ecosystem in Europe?
Our team is multidisciplinary and highly qualified, in which we count on two graduates in Physics as Big Data architect and business expert, a Telecommunication Engineer as a Big data developer and a Doctor in Physics as a data scientist, all working side by side. This makes our team very efficient, enabling to carry out high quality Big Data solutions that are being implemented by important companies in Spain or in Europe.
Also we have the experience of working as partners with opensource EEUU’s leaders, this give as a different point of view to develop an scalable business.
In addition and not less important we have our origins in one of the European most innovative regions in several Industry sectors with an close relation with German and France markets and companies. At Zylk we believe that this formula will suit perfectly in European’s big data ecosystem ecosystem.
