Meet the Residents of Onehouse - Po Hong!

We are thrilled to share our new series “Meet the Residents of Onehouse”, that shines light on all the awesome talent that is part of Onehouse. This week we have Po Hong (https://www.linkedin.com/in/po-hong-ph-d-233a206/) who is a Lead Solutions Architect at Onehouse. 

1) How did you first learn about Onehouse?

I first learned about Onehouse when I was performing a search on an Apache Hudi Deep Dive topic on behalf of a big AWS customer in early 2022.  I was a Principal Data Architect with AWS ProServe then. 

2) What prior work/project experience were you most excited to bring to Onehouse?

I have ~20 years of experience in the field of Big Data, enterprise data warehousing and cloud computing (AWS).  I have deep and extensive experience in MPP databases and ETL. Most recently I was a Principal Data Architect at AWS where I had spent 6+ wonderful years focusing on designing and building large scale cloud data warehouses (Amazon Redshift) and lakehouses (aka Modern Data Architecture in AWS).  

I joined AWS ProServe in May, 2016 after ~10+ years of dedicated MPP data warehousing experience at Teradata and Vertica. I started out as a Big Data consultant (working on EMR/Presto/Glue/Athena/Redshift) in 2016 at AWS and I was promoted to Principal Data Architect of the AWS Lake House Global Specialty Practice (GSP) in early 2020. Between 2020 and 2022,  my main focus had been on guiding large strategic AWS customers to migrate from legacy MPP data warehouses to the AWS Lake House architecture using AWS native services such as S3/Glue/Lake Formation/Athena/Redshift and Redshift Spectrum/Step Functions/Managed Apache Airflow, etc. Sometimes these AWS customers also used 3rd party technologies such as Apache Hudi, Delta Lake, and Apache Iceberg and they often asked me for advices. This is the reason that I have developed a fairly good understanding of all these modern Lakehouse storage systems vs table formats including AWS's own Lake Formation governed tables.

3) Why did you choose to join Onehouse?

I have been a big fan of Apache Hudi since 2019. I have read every blog and watched many YouTube videos by Vinoth Chandar (Onehouse Founder and CEO). I liked the Apache Hudi's complete open-source approach and saw first hand how Hudi has helped several of my AWS customers moving to a modern lakehouse architecture incorporating the best features from RDBMs by adding transaction support, rollback, concurrency control and upserts/deletes to the data lake.  

Under the roof of Onehouse, there are dedicated engineering resources to serve the Apache Hudi Community better.  I believe this can dramatically speed up customer's journey to modern data lakehouses in a cost effective way.  "Open table formats are not enough. We deliver real openness with data services that ensure your infrastructure is not tied to any one vendor." This Onehouse motto aligns perfectly with my personal belief about where the industry is headed in the near future.

4) What do you appreciate the most about being a part of the Onehouse team?

Hard to pick one.  I am very impressed by the diversity and talents of my co-workers and the fact that the company is led by the creators of Apache Hudi with a strong culture of customer obsession and engineering excellence. 

5) What about being in a startup environment motivates you?

Two factors stand out as the main motivation for me to join an early stage startup like Onehouse.  First is the chance of making a meaningful and direct impact to the product and company's success as compared to working in larger and more established companies. Second is the opportunity for professional growth by enhancing and expanding skills into the new and exciting field of Lakehouse and working alongside with and learning from some of the best talents in the startup world.

5) If you had to choose one of the five Onehouse culture values you feel speaks to you personally, which would it be and why?

This is another hard question.  I actually like all five Onehouse culture values: "Tough & Persevering", "Keep Making It Better Always",

"Think Big, Act Fast", "Be Customer Obsessed" and "One Team".  They reminded me of Amazon's famous Leadership Principles. 

If I have to pick one, it has to be "Be Customer Obsessed".  At Onehouse, everyone is expected to be a leader who should always focus on the needs of our customers and working backwards, regardless if they are direct users of the Onehouse product or from the Apache Hudi Open Source community.  Everyone is expected to take ownership of customer's experience. If something is broken, own it, say something, do something; never ignore. Be the change that you want to see in the company.

6) What are you most excited to see happen as Onehouse continues to grow in 2022?

I would be very excited to see the company achieve two milestones by the end of 2022: 1) Expand the product from the current AWS and GCP coverage to also include Azure and 2) Demonstrate product maturity and growth by delivering significant values to Pilot and early customers. 

Thank you, Po Hong, for speaking with the team and for all of your contributions to the Onehouse Family. 

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If you are new to Onehouse, or just beginning to understand Onehouse makes it possible to blend the ease of use of a warehouse with the scale of a data lake, or you’ve just read these words for the first time (welcome aboard! 🚀), let us take a moment to introduce ourselves and share a little history;

Onehouse delivers a new bedrock for your data, through a cloud-native, fully-managed lakehouse service built on Apache Hudi. Onehouse makes it possible to blend the ease of use of a warehouse with the scale of a data lake. Now you can build your lake in minutes, process your data in seconds, and own your data in open formats instead of being locked away to individual vendors.

Want to learn more about Onehouse and how to join our community? Visit https://www.onehouse.ai/ and say hello! You can also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.