From Working as a Laborer to Writing a Bestseller, Joe Caserta, Caserta Founding President, Finds Success with the Power of Passion

“The pursuit of finding new ways to create solutions and invent and reinvent is what keeps me energized.” 

Caserta is a strategic consulting and implementation firm laser-focussed on helping leaders strategize, architect and build data and analytics solutions. Caserta consultants partner with CIOs and other leaders who understand the importance of using data to grow their businesses to realize their data and analytics goals on time and on budget without needing to increase their headcount.

The company has built and sustained its thought leadership position under the guidance of internationally recognized thought-leader, author, and educator, Joe Caserta.

Caserta was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in New York.

Joe Caserta, Caserta Founding President, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Q. Explain your customized IT services in brief.

Caserta is a leading strategic technology consulting and implementation firm with a reputation for creating bold, state-of-the-art solutions. The company aids businesses and IT leaders to transform their organizations by and through their data. It extracts value from their data through strategic assessments, design, and implementation. Caserta develops customized solutions that are fit for the unique business challenges faced by its clients. It specializes in all things present in data and analytics including big data, modern data architecture, cloud migration, enterprise data management, business intelligence, data visualization, advanced analytics, and machine learning.

Q. You need experts in the house to provide reliable and flawless IT consulting services. How did you manage to form a team of qualified professionals?

Collaboration is central to creative thinking within my organization. I work with people who are just as passionate about data intelligence as I am. We have a mix of age groups at Caserta from millennials to baby boomers and they all have a creative and innovative perspective to bring to the table. I have custom-built my teams based on the needs of our clients, so we can work together to create bespoke solutions. We all strive to act as our clients’ partners and guides.

I encourage our employees – and our clients – to think outside the box and instead of coming up with an easy solution, come up with a ground-breaking innovative solution. No idea is a bad one. There is nothing that can’t be done. Data analytics can be used everywhere and in every industry and there is no limit to innovative ways in which to create solutions. The employees at Caserta know that is what we strive for.

Q. Reliable technology services come with an expensive price tag. Are your services affordable for SMEs?

Caserta works closely with each of its clients to determine their needs and challenges, and how it can innovate their business. The organization is vendor agnostic, so it works with its clients to determine the right tool(s) for their BI and analytics needs. Caserta’s consultants are always up-to-date on the latest tools and technologies, working tirelessly to strengthen its clients’ teams and empowering them with the skills that are crucial to solving their toughest BI challenges the first time.

Q. Who or what has shaped who you are?

Curiosity is above all my biggest motivator. Any time I experience anything, my mind instantly wanders in search of a better way. The pursuit of finding new ways to create solutions and invent and reinvent is what keeps me energized. As for role models, I have two folks that sit and the polar opposite of the business/creative spectrum. Steve Jobs has always been an inspiration for his relentless pursuit – against all odds – to transform his vision into reality. And second, reflects my passion for music: James Hatfield, the guitarist for Metallica, is admiral for his ability to combine discipline, mastery of his craft, new techniques, creativity, imagination, and soul to create something new that positively impacts the world. All of these things – coupled with empathy for my clients’ needs are at the core of every solution I provide.

Q. Describe a time you had to make a tough decision. What did you do and what was the result?

I think one of the most important decisions a CEO/founder makes as a leader is to take calculated risks. Success is always just outside your comfort zone, and if you stay comfortable you will not grow – as a person or as a business. Equally important is to always listen to clients. You must be an active listener so that the client is understood and you know the exact problem to solve – from their perspective. Next, you should motivate your employees to think like an owner. Empower and reward employees so they have some investment in their work as you do. Next, be a good decision maker – and an active decision-maker – because a good CEO realizes that sometimes an imperfect decision may be better than no decision at all. And most importantly, be innovative; don’t just take orders from your client; advise them and reinvent ways to accomplish their goals.

Q. If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting, what would it be?

Being an entrepreneur, my success mantra is ‘the only way to do it is to do it’. You can speak about doing something and waste the whole time theorizing about it. But in the end, you just have to do it because it’s the only way you’re going to get ahead and get an opportunity to succeed. Therefore, I always tell people that it is okay to have failures because it is part of the process.

Besides, it does not matter whether or not they get to the correct answer, what matters is to see and understand how they go about solving a challenge.

Q. What do you think is the most memorable moment in your career?

The most memorable moment for me was writing the book ‘The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit’ with Ralph Kimball, which became an industry bestseller and is now the standard for preparing data integration for analytics. Writing a book – even one on technology – truly reaches within the soul to complete. It is an experience I will never forget. And not so much memorable, but pivotal, is a major, catastrophic car accident I had that changed my life and career path. If it wasn’t for that accident, I most likely would not be in data technology today and definitely would have not been in the position to launch Caserta in 2001. Before the accident, I was a construction worker/laborer. I sustained massive permanent injuries to my back, and could not do physical labor anymore. I needed to change my career and studied Database Architecture and Design at Columbia University and the rest, as they say, is history.

Joe Caserta: An Entrepreneur with a Great Appetite for Success

Joe Caserta is the founding president of Caserta. He carved his path towards success by overcoming all the challenges thrown at him. Born and raised in NYC, Joe completed his education in database application development and design at Columbia University in New York. Back in 1986, Joe was mostly trying to get data out of transaction systems and after 10 years in 1996, he discovered dimensional data modeling and data warehousing. This led him to the foundation of Caserta, which is the amalgam of his prior working experience in the data and analytics industry. Using his extensive knowledge, Joe co-authored ‘The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit’, which became an industry bestseller and has also become the standard for preparing data integration for analytics.

Moreover, Joe is an internationally recognized public speaker, entrepreneur, and technologist. Over the last three decades, he has progressed from transaction systems to dimensional data warehousing to big data analytics to innovative and advanced data analytics applications.

Therefore, since the inception of Caserta, Joe has leveraged the technological advancement of the data and analytics domain and gathered a stellar team of strategists and technologists. Together, they continually push the status quo to take data intelligence to the next level. Under Joe’s leadership, Caserta was recently named as ‘Top IT Services Company for 2019’ by Clutch.co and recognized as ‘Top Gartner Market Guide to BI and Advanced Analytics Service Providers and Advanced Analytics Service Providers’, to name a few.

“Being an entrepreneur, my success mantra is ‘the only way to do it is to do it’.”