At a crowded CIO Council roundtable today, the Middle East arm of SAS, an international leader in business analytics, announced the official launch of the D1 appliance – an all-in-one data warehousing and data analytics solution that is set to change the way SMEs in the region use and interact with their data.
The CIO Council roundtable brought together more than 50 senior decision makers from the UAE to discuss the changing nature of data analytics and the best ways of deriving intelligence from exploding information.
At the CIO Council roundtable, conducted by CNME, SAS, the company’s data warehousing partners Greenplum and local integration partner Altis, presented on the benefits of the solution for SMEs.
“SMEs and the problems that they need to solve are as complex as that of any major enterprise anywhere. This complexity is not related to size, but is a product of the world that we all operate in. The amount of data that these companies have to deal with increase every day, and there is the element of unstructured data as well (which includes social media and blogs) which are becoming key to understanding sentiments and thoughts of a company among its existing and potential client base,” said Carel Badenhorst, head of the technology practice at SAS MEA.
“Data capture alone cannot help companies make sense of the world; it is about understanding the data, and this can be done only with analytics. Analytics is the only capability that provides companies with a beautiful view of data and allows them to do something about it. The cost and complexity of analytics solutions have put off SMEs from investing in them in the past. The SAS D1 appliance addresses all these issues and helps these companies get more from their data,” added Badenhorst.
SAS’s D1 appliance brings together capabilities of Greenplum, the data warehouse pioneer and Dell, along with SAS’s capabilities to form a complete solution that possesses the latest technologies for data warehousing, data integration, data mining and forecasting, as well as full business intelligence.
Speaking at the CIO Council roundtable, Phillip Roy, director of Greenplum in the ME elaborated on the merits of the partnership, and the new capabilities that the D1 would provide SMEs in the UAE and the larger region.
“With the D1 the region suddenly has the opportunity to leapfrog over more developed countries. This is our initiative, our partnership, that is applicable only in the region right now. The appliance has been launched only for the region, for regional SMEs and cannot yet be accessed in the US or the UK. This gives SMEs here a real opportunity to take and use the latest, bundled solution for their larger benefit,” stated Roy.
Roy also spoke at length about Greenplum’s integration in the D1 appliance and how organisations can use the same for accessing and understanding big data, and make sense of it for larger business benefits.
He was followed by Ali Gooyabadi, chief strategy officer at Altis Distribution, who explained how SMEs can achieve return on investment (ROI) with the D1 appliance, or even a larger data analytics solution, and pointed out that when done the right way, with sufficient data and supporting processes, these organisations can hope to get back the value of their investment within months.
Questions at the CIO Council roundtable centred around the competitive landscape for data analysis in the region, along with the language and integration capabilities of the SAS D1 appliance itself.
SAS, Greenplum and Altis will be coming together again to conduct a CIO Council roundtable in Abu Dhabi in November. Keep checking www.computernewsme.com/ms/sas for updates.
CNME conducts regular CIO Council roundtables, in partnership with different vendors, across the region. For updates and information on these sessions, keep visiting www.cnmeonline.com.
