Portrait series – 3 questions for François ABELLA, Founder and CTO at DQE
“Everyone talks about Big Data, but who is really doing it? At DQE, this is the daily routine of our technical teams, as evidenced by our daily processing of 60 million queries, or several billion per year.”
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How were things in the past, before creating DQE in 2008?
«A passion I’ve had since childhood»
I have always been interested in how things work, and what better at 12 years old than to secretly dismantle my father’s new multi-band radio, and then not being able to put it back together! Believe me, this earned me quite a reprimand, but far from extinguishing my curiosity, this admonition only amplified it. Some time later, I discovered a book on radio building for Dummies in a bookstore. I continued tinkering with electronics in my area, the Loir-et-Cher department, helping (as best I could) a small local TV repairman in daily tasks like disassembling and reassembling radios and TVs, then doing rudimentary checks on fuses, resistors, capacitors… A quid pro quo: the repairman trained me and even provided me with some electronic components that allowed me to create my first builds from scratch.
I could have stayed in electronics all my life, but it was my parents’ relocation to the United States for two years that determined my path. I fell headfirst into the computer world at the age of 16 thanks to the appearance of the TRS 80, Commodore 64 and the first Apple microcomputers in the United States, as well as the Computer Science option that I had taken in my high school at Lake Forest Academy.
«Back to France, and so much to do»
I now knew what to do, but France was not yet at the same level as the United States, so I had to make do with what was available.
I finished my high school studies (French baccalauréat) and then went to University of Paris VI to take the university degree course (DEUG-A+) in math, physics, and finally, fundamental computer science. At the same time, I found the first computer club in Issy-les-Moulineaux where I developed a passion for programming (mainly game development) and sharing my know-how with the members. All of my developments of games for fun and for education have been published by Hatier or by manufacturers such as Goupil, Texas Instruments, Thomson, and Atari. I also wrote several programming books published by Sybex and, little by little, turned to systems in more and more complex areas, in the industrial and medical fields, among others.
One of my most memorable experiences was in 1983 when I participated in the creation of EPITA where, with its founder Patrice Dumoucel, we created the model for the full dev engineers of the future. During this period, I had to develop teaching methods for computer programming, algorithms, hardware design and language theory, but above all to create, with the first students, the concept of what was to become “La Piscine” (The Pool) and which at the time we called “Le Bocal à Poissons” (The Fishbowl).
Since then, I have founded several pioneering IT companies in rules engines and AI, collaborative EDM, Big Data and data flow management. These experiences allowed me to identify market needs for better data quality management, which led to the creation of DQE in 2008.
What direction is DQE taking?
«Becoming the international leader in Data Quality»
In my previous experience as co-founder & CTO of SPAD, I found that data correction took up to 70% of the time of an analysis project, with considerable amounts of duplicate records. DQE was born to fill the gap in terms of intrinsic data quality control and deduplication tools.
The DQE algorithm is part of its trademark and has allowed us to be forerunners in Data Quality since 2009. DQE-SUITE, one of our historical products, can process 1 million lines according to complex search keys in only 3 minutes. We were the first in France to offer real-time control of postal address data entry with a free-form typing tool based on a postal repository (meaning millions of reference data elements!). All this with a service that only runs on a few servers.
Today DQE is the French leader in Data Quality with a complete offer that is recognized as innovative in relation to the state of the art in the field. The company is now developing in the United States because all the conditions for its international expansion are in place: time-to-market, teams, and technology.
For a developer, what is unique about working at DQE?
«First of all, it’s a continuous challenge»
Everyone talks about Big Data, but who is really doing it? At DQE, this is the daily routine of our technical teams, as evidenced by our daily processing of 60 million queries, or several billion per year.
Developers at DQE are confronted with highly technical software challenges at several levels in terms of:
- Big Data Volumetrics,
- Data qualification tools and connectors for business solutions like Salesforce, Microsoft Power-Platform, Magento, etc.,
- Algorithmic optimization of processing times,
- DevOps for data flow control and database update processing,
- Cybersecurity - we experience penetration attempts on our servers every day,
- Securing customer data.
«Innovation, transmission, and a passion for development»
Innovation is one of DQE’s major assets, from AI research to textual analysis on international languages. We work with many Big Data technologies, including those from DQE.
The mission of a developer at DQE has what it takes to fulfill the aspirations of passionate people who have a taste for challenge and the desire to move forward!
François Abella’s key dates
1983: At 22, publication of his first book on game programming
1984: Co-founding of EPITA, École Pour l’Informatique et les Technologies Avancées, a school focused on computer science and advanced technologies
1985: Founding of SECIA which developed expert systems with the first AI models, and the MACAO product, the first course creation engine on diskette for teachers
1987: Cabinet Abella – Development of the first configurable HRIS (HR & Payroll) and its EDM system, running on Windows
1996: Founding of IRIS Engineering which marketed the first collaborative EDM solution
1998: Founding of Test&Go, a specialist in quality control and compliance of collected data flows
2003: Test&Go acquired a statistical analysis company and became SPAD, France’s leading publisher of statistical data analysis, since acquired by Coheris
2008: Founding of DQE
… In 2023: DQE will celebrate 15 years of operation, and establish its presence in the United States and Europe.
About DQE
Because data quality is essential to customer knowledge and the construction of a lasting relationship, since 2008, DQE has provided its clients with innovative and comprehensive solutions that facilitate the collection of reliable data.
17
Year of
expertise
800
Clients in all
sectors
3Md
Queries per
year
