The annual Teradata User Group conference hosted by Bytes Universal Systems (BUS) took place in Johannesburg last week. BUS is the sole local distributor of Teradata’s products in sub-Saharan Africa.
The fifth of its kind, this year’s conference brought a number of local and international experts and thought-leaders to Johannesburg to address local Teradata users and partners.
The event kicked off with a discussion with seasoned rugby player Victor Matfield, who participated in an open conversation with Hendrik Blignaut, Enterprise Intelligence Solutions Teradata executive at BUS.
The keynote address was delivered by Teradata CIO Dr Stephen Brobst, who focused on mobility – and the impact it’s having on data warehousing. There are more than 100m smartphones in the US, he says, and Gartner predicts that, this year, 33% of BI functionality will be consumed by mobile devices. This gives organisations the opportunity to leverage the data they have to deliver value to customers.
“Think about how you can take your data and turn it into value for your customers,” says Brobst, “For example by helping businesses monitor their performance with mobile corporate performance management, which allows organisations to monitor what is going on in real time and intervene as appropriate.”
An interesting future trend which is still in its infancy is SPIME (Space + Time).
“All objects such as your pets, vehicles, products and even your children can now be tracked by inserting chips. This leads to interesting apps such as Fedex’s SenseAware,” notes Brobst, “All of this leads us to big data.”
The second big address of the day was presented by Vic Winch, director big data Technologies, Teradata International, big data Centre of Excellence. Winch delved into the opportunities for innovation that big data presents. Organisations shouldn’t get hung up on big data, though, he says. They should fail fast and discover more, focus on all data, forget big data, and think of data as part of the product.
SAA’s HOD for Airline Operations Solutions Paul Pavlides presented the first talk in the business track, taking delegates through SAA’s Teradata journey thus far, and how they are now well positioned to leverage the power of their integrated data, in particular for the customer loyalty programs.
Those who opted to attend the technical track were taken through insights on how big data will change data warehouses, particularly the structure, and the varieties of data that warehouses today have to store – structured, unstructured, semi-structured.
The second business track presentation included Will Cage, business development manager, Teradata applications international. Cage presented on big data driven marketing and monetisation.
“The CMO is now accountable for success – managing digital disruption, driving a relevant customer experience and trying to gain insight from mountains of digital data,” notes Cage.
“According to Gartner, by 2017 CMOs will spend more on technology than CIOs,” says Cage. “Digital transformation projects are becoming a huge trend in large corporations. Understanding and managing the customer journey across multiple-channels can be done with data-driven marketing.”
Brobst concluded the day with a talk on data scientists and their role in the big data space. “A data scientist is not interested in the answer to a business question – he wants to know what the question is that should be asked.”
The Harvard Business Review claims that a data scientist has the sexiest job in the 21st century and Gartner’s description states that the data scientist is the most important person on your staff.
“The data scientist makes the decisions for the enterprise, but never get between a data scientist and his data,” concludes Brobst.
