Can technology, and real-time technology in particular, help companies achieve savings during economic hardship? Alok Pareek thinks it can.

Pareek is the Co-founder and EVP of products of Striim, a vendor whose goal and motto is to "help companies make data useful the instant it’s born".

Depending on which angle you look at it, you could say that Pareek is either biased or in the know. Either way, it was not so long ago that real-time data, or streaming data as this market is also called, was estimated to be worth billions.

But then again, as the recent wave of layoffs and market capitalization losses goes to show, many projections around technology are off the mark.

Could real-time data be different? Where does cloud modernization come into play and how does Striim's offering relate to that? As Striim today announced the availability of its fully managed Striim Cloud service on Amazon Web Services (AWS), we connected with Pareek to discuss.