Tigris Data CEO on Building Your Own Datacenters

In this episode of the a16z podcast, Martin Casado interviews Ovais Tariq, co-founder and CEO of Tigris Data, about the challenges of independent storage, operating datacenters, and the future of cloud computing. Ovais shares his background in building global storage infrastructure at Uber and explains how Tigris Data provides globally distributed, S3 API-compatible storage solutions optimized for AI companies and new compute clouds. They discuss the complexities of managing both high-level distributed systems and low-level hardware considerations like bitrot, the importance of developer experience, and the advantages of immutability for features like instant forking and snapshotting. The conversation also covers capacity planning, the cost benefits of Tigris Data's no-egress-fee model, and the impact of AI on coding practices and the evolution of cloud services.