Krystian Piećko

"Knowledge does not occupy any physical space, as the saying goes, but data does. And in the era of big data, we not only need to store it – we also need to analyze it in order to glean all of the information it contains. To expedite both processes, the young, Polish innovator Krystian Pie?ko has developed DataWalk, a platform that integrates data from multiple sources into a single repository and is extremely efficient at performing data analysis. This accomplishment has led to Pie?ko´s inclusion in MIT Technology Review´s Innovators Under 35 Poland 2016 awards.

""The main advantage [of DataWalk] is the ability to perform calculations without having to move data around,"" Pie?ko explains. ""Another advantage is that it allows the user to connect and integrate data from different sources easily and without any time-consuming work to be done in advance to structure the data according to the type of analysis to be performed on them in the future."" According to this young, Polish innovator, ""the value of big data resides in extracting knowledge from the data,"" but its complexity prevents exploratory analysis without first defining what type of questions will be posed before designing the software that structures the data and prepares it for analysis.

Pie?ko says: ""Our platform performs data integration 10 times faster, which reduces the implementation period for big data projects by up to three months, whereas other solutions take years to develop,"" he highlights. One of the primary industries interested in the software developed by Pie?ko´s company, PiLab, is the data analysis of financial transactions as a detection mechanism for money laundering activities.

One of the keys to DataWalk´s agility resides in the way that the platform manages the data. ""Analyzing data normally means moving terabytes from one physical location to another, in order to perform the analysis,"" says Pie?ko. This movement slows down the rate of operation and multiplies the resources dedicated to data traffic and storage. DataWalk, however, ""doesn´t need to duplicate the stored information in order to proceed to the analysis stage, which makes it more agile,"" he concludes.

In the opinion of the executive director of Digital Banking at BG? BNP Paribas, Piotr Marciniak, ""the technology Pie?ko has developed addresses a very important issue that we are currently facing."" According to this member of the jury panel for the Innovators Under 35 Poland 2016 awards: ""we are being flooded with information that currently is not easy to analyze,"" and PiLab´s solution will help to improve this situation."