Teradata, a Big Data analytics and marketing applications company, recently opened its third Indian professional services centre in Airoli, Navi Mumbai, further expanding its footprint across the country. The new Americas Development Centre (ADC) will provide services to Teradata’s customers across the Americas region. The Airoli centre is Teradata’s third professional services centre after Mumbai and Pune. “India continues to be a very important region for Teradata,” says Sunil Jose, managing director at Teradata India. The $2.7-billion, Dayton, Ohio-based firm is aggressively investing in people, resources, skills, customer acquisition and technology development in the country. It competes with IBM, Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce.com and SAS, and has significant operations in India and in terms of strength of employee base is second only to US globally, Jose tells Sudhir Chowdhary in a recent interaction. Excerpts:
How is the data analytics market turning up in India?
Indian market is still in early stages of adoption of analytics. However, with surplus talent, developing
infrastructure, and a mature ecosystem, India is on its way to become a global hub for analytics. Today, more data means more details, but not necessarily more insight. Despite being data rich, Indian organisations are still insight poor. This is where data analytics is needed. We are working with organisations to help them realise and uncover how more data can provide an opportunity to gain more as well as better insight. This new insight can drive better decisions that give them a competitive edge or allow for new avenues for business growth.
When you make the right decisions based on reliable information, everything falls into place: customers increase, revenues rise, opportunities emerge, and new efficiencies replace old ones.
To what extent do you think enterprises are accepting Big Data and data analytics in India?
Till a couple of years back it was the larger enterprises that were adopting data analytics. However, today analytics has become pervasive, it is accepted across large and mid size organisations. Indian organisations are seeing a lot of data but when it comes to drawing insights, they lack behind their global peers like eBay, Netflix, Volvo, Ford etc.
However, India Inc is now increasingly seeking Big Data opportunities in the context of a rapidly shifting technological landscape and disruptive forces that produce and demand new data types and new kinds of information processing. Evolving Big Data, open source technology advancements along with the rise in the demand for cloud based solutions have led to huge adoption and evaluation of business intelligence and Big Data analytics solutions in India.
How important is India market for you?
India continues to be a very important region for Teradata. The company is continuously investing in people, resources, skills, customer acquisition and technology development in the country. The company has significant operations in India and in terms of strength of employee base is second only to US globally. Teradata has been in India for over 12 years now. Over 1,700 people work out of India across R&D, consulting and professional services and sales field operations across Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Gurgaon and Hyderabad. Teradata recently opened its third professional services centre in Airoli, Navi Mumbai to cater to clients abroad as well as in India looking to add over 300 people in the next year at this centre.
We work with 60% of telecom organisations in India and have significant customer base in BFSI and manufacturing. We are focused on BFSI, telecom, retail, e-commerce, manufacturing, automotive and government as the key focus industries which will drive our growth in India. Some of our global clients who have a significant presence in India are Volvo, Hertz, P&G, Unilever, Vodafone, Lufthansa, Sears, Barclays, Standard Chartered, and Siemens.
Talk to us about some of the key services provided by Teradata to its customers.
Teradata provides end-to-end solutions and services in data warehousing, Big Data and analytics, and marketing applications that enable organisations to become data-driven busineses. We make data and analytics the primary competitive advantage of our customers by transforming any data into actionable insights.
The most important and critical part is that we understand the needs of our customers and help them in building a strategy for their data. What differentiates us from others is our consultative approach and ability to execute and deliver on the implementation of a Big Data strategy. We consider ourselves as a product and services company. Moreover, we are not into diverse products like other service providers, we have always focused on data and are experts and leaders in the analytics space. In a very real sense, we are the original “big data” company. We make certain that our solutions work the way our customers do to deliver the value they require and are offered with flexible delivery options—on-premises, as managed services, or in the cloud.
Has Teradata helped in business growth of its clients, through their services?
In India, Teradata has contributed significantly with its Unified Data Architecture approach across multiple industries. In the year 2015,
Teradata made some significant announcements, which can support a lot of Big Data and analytics initiatives that organisations are undertaking in India and make it easier for them to adopt and implement the solutions.
Globally Teradata has been working with some of the top organisations across sectors, offering them the best practices, expertise and knowledge and sharing the same with the Indian enterprises. A few of the customers doing cutting edge work in their field include Groupon, eBay and PayPal among others.
Netflix is a good example that I want to talk about. Just look at the technological transformation of the company. They are using Big Data to drive big engagement. Netflix engages customers by leveraging Teradata as a critical component of its data and analytics platform to create a data-driven, customer-focused business. It is an undisputed leader and innovator in the over the-top content space, understands this context better than most. It has staked its business and its brand on delivering highly targeted, personalised experiences for every subscriber—and has even begun using its remarkably detailed insights to change the way it buys, licenses and develops content, causing many throughout the media and entertainment industries to sit up and take notice. More recently, the two companies partnered to transition Netflix to the Teradata Cloud, which has given Netflix the power and flexibility it needs—and, so, the ability to maintain its focus on those initiatives at the core of its business.