“We enable enterprises worldwide to make their web apps and sites stand out with beautiful interactive charts, maps, and dashboards that let data speak”: AnyChart

“Our JavaScript (HTML5) based data visualization solutions feature massive out-of-the-box capabilities, combined with the flexibility and the simplicity. Loved by thousands of happy customers.”

Some companies choose to ignore the growing stacks of data and continue to rely on standard methods like spreadsheets that offer little insight. Others take a leap and bring in software that helps them quickly analyze their data by means of charts and dashboards: sales, server load, project progress, marketing activities, etc. Indeed, data aids more educated, fact-based business decisions and predictions when visualized.

Companies that do realize that being able to analyze lots of data at the same time in the form of interactive visualizations have a competitive advantage. From understanding their customers’ buying habits to revealing idle resources and to choosing the best location for the next local branch, the possibilities to get ahead of one’s competitors by efficiently viewing one’s data are endless.

AnyChart observed the demand for robust interactive data visualization tools and established the company in 2003 which is now a global leader in the industry. Its charting solutions help thousands of business users from all over the world increase revenues, reduce operational costs, and better serve their customers. Corporate giants Oracle, Microsoft, Volkswagen, Samsung, BP, Bosch, Citi, Lockheed Martin and many others are using AnyChart’s technologies to gain better insight into their business, improving decision-making and enterprise performance.

Head to head with the luminary: Anton Baranchuk, CEO/Founder

Could you unveil about AnyChart, the products you are working at present, and where your company is going to?

AnyChart is a data visualization software development company, one of the few global leaders in this field. The company’s core products are four robust, fully cross-browser JavaScript (HTML5) charting libraries that work seamlessly with any platform, technology, and database. They are:

• AnyChart, a JS library for creating basic charts, featuring many dozens of chart types out of the box;
• AnyStock, a JS charting library for date and time based visualizations such as stock and financial charts;
• AnyMap, a JS library for making interactive maps, and
• AnyGantt, also a JS (HTML5) library, designed for building Project Gantt, Resource, and PERT charts.

Actually, these are marketed as different, purpose-specific solutions within the framework of the AnyChart JS Charts product family, but essentially it’s one powerful, complex AnyChart JavaScript charting library.

What made you think of data visualization software and dataviz tools as a prospective IT business? How did you initiate?

Well, we were captivated by an idea that we came up with back in 2003 when discussing data visualization as a very interesting segment.

From the technical point of view, visualizing data is quite a simple task in terms of charts and data as such. But when it comes to enterprise reporting systems, it’s very hard for an engineer to accurately predict a few critical conditions in good time beforehand. In particular – what kind of data will be there, and what questions the analysts will want data to answer.

Keeping that in mind, we decided to build a universal solution that would create any chart in any conditions and keep the picture clear and insightful for viewers at all events. Inventing such a “Swiss knife” that would suit all or the vast majority of data and question types looked as a very challenging but appeared indeed thrilling – and successful – entrepreneurship.

Could you please explicate about your initial product?

We started when Adobe Flash was popular. Also, that was the time when XML emerged and began to evolve rapidly. So, we came up with an idea that it is possible to extract data in the XML format from any source and then display it graphically in Flash. Basically, that’s exactly what our first AnyChart system was capable to do proficiently: visualize XML data as a Flash based chart.

The first version of AnyChart was doing well from almost the very beginning. Shortly after the launch, we managed to earn several big customers, which then gave us a solid push forward.

One of them was Oracle that decided to integrate AnyChart as an out-of-the-box Flash charting solution into APEX, an extremely popular web app development tool used by multiple thousand people around the world. As a result, we got an enormous volume of feedback, a huge number of use cases, and so on, which helped us quickly make a quantum leap in terms of product, support, and overall business.

What were the pitfalls you encountered during your initial years?

First of all, Flash and XML were young technologies, so there were a lot of bugs, security issues, and so on. When we first earned big customers like Oracle, we had to re-arrange our support activities in order to respond to thousands of developers almost simultaneously.

The next major challenge was transition from Flash to HTML5. When Flash was not allowed to work on the iPhone, it began to die, and then HTML5 took its place, so we had to re-build everything. Moreover, we had to support both Flash and HTML5 during the transition, which was another quite extraordinary issue. But we are happy to have coped with all that.

Now we still support Flash, but this part of our job is getting smaller and smaller as our customers are also shifting to HTML5 solutions.

Greet the ace

Anton Baranchuk, CEO and Founder of AnyChart, one of the globally leading developers of interactive data visualization solutions. Graduated from the Irkutsk State University with a degree in Discrete Mathematics and Mathematical Cybernetics. PhD in Mathematics. Founded and worked as the CEO of multiple successful IT companies including AlterGeo (one of the world’s leaders in hybrid geolocation technologies), ActivateSoft (technological solutions for software protection), Sibental (multimedia software for image and video processing), and SoftIdentity, (design studio).

Get in touch:

www.anychart.com

“We give you the most advanced, best designed, and best supported data visualization tools available.”