Starburst Galaxy

It was 10pm MYT, and I led my first introductory call for my team with a 3rd-party vendor - Starburst Galaxy.

Starburst is a managed Trino service that acts as a general query engine. It can connect to multiple different sources and perform the necessary computation.

In that call, I liked the other side's line of inquiry and really felt that he was trying to help both sides succeed. Which I think is the key to a successful partnership.

Here are some of the content we went through which could be helpful for those who are managing new customer accounts:

• Self-introduction
• Who are the main consumers of the data? And how many of them are there?
• What are the main use cases for data?
• What's the current data architecture, and why are you looking into this product?
• What are the key things you prioritize or evaluate for new tools?
• What is the timeline for implementation?
• InfoSec and compliance requirements, i.e., SOC2
• Pricing between managed and self-hosted
• Support plan expectations
• Monitoring and alerting such as DataDog integration
• Follow up steps for next week

Some of the things I will do better with similar calls:

• Prepare a generic introduction for the team and the company
• Prepare questions related to the discussion topics
• Limit the amount of information you give out (i.e., don't mention if you are only evaluating one company) and try to get the other side to talk more

November 7th, 2023