GEC NEWS WIRE‘Big data and Business intelligence are relative terms’. The recently concluded Big Data show in Dubai, gave EC MEA an exciting opportunity to have a tête-à-tête with BI titans Finesse— who have been ruling the roost as the ideal partners for Business Intelligence in the region for more than a decade now and Qlik—who is one of the leading players in Business Intelligence, harnessing the power of big data analytics for business users. John Sands, Qlik Evangelist, Global Product Marketing; Sunil Paul, Co-Founder & COO, Finesse and Eljo JP, Director Business Development, Finesse stipple their opinions on the Big data trend in the region, the growth of business intelligence and the key factors behind the Finesse-Qlik partnership.
“Many organizations are data rich, but information poor”
John Sands,Global Product Marketing Qlik Evangelist
“The way we look at data is a 360° approach.”
Sunil Paul, Co-Founder & COO, Finesse
“With the growing landscape of Big Data and social media, the need for data analytics have soared. Hence BI will gain more momentum now.”
Eljo JP, Director Business Development, Finesse
One of the key factors fuelling the Big Data market in the Middle East and Africa is the rapid increase in data generation from different verticals.
According to John Sands, Qlik Evangelist, Global product marketing, “Organizations today, are data rich but information poor. Organizations accumulate huge amount of data without determining the usefulness of it. In such a situation, Business Intelligence harnesses the power of big data and renders useful information.” He added that BI builds up to only 20% of an organization’s structure because of the misconception that business intelligence leads to IT taking over the business. So predominantly excel was the trend for long for data archiving and storing. He says, “People across the globe believe that they have business intelligence but actually they do not. It is like big data—many people talk about it but how many have actually implemented it is an entirely different thing. I have been to multimillion dollar organizations who are still running their businesses on Excel. BI in many places is still on the top of CIOs’ list of ‘Things to do’ but I would like to emphasize this fact that we are still data rich and information poor.”
Qlik, with Qlik View and Qlik Sense, changed this mindset and enabled business to explore their data rather than just accumulating it. “We are one of the biggest players in Data Discovery and with data visualization and discovery application we help business explore data deeply” says John Sands. “Qlik can join many data sets together, regardless of it being excel, access, oracle, SAP…. It doesn’t matter because we can align all that and give a complete view of all your data.” he adds.
Finesse has been one of the leading partners of Qlik in the region for the past three and half years. The successful partnership has spearheaded many pivotal projects in the region. Finesse works with around 70% of the banks in the region and is uniquely positioned as the Numero Uno BFSI system integrator in the region. Shedding more light on the Finesse side of business intelligence, Sunil Paul, Co-Founder and COO of Finesse says, “On the business intelligence platform, we work with Qlik to enhance the BI experience with a lot of visualization and analytics tools. But, as Finesse is a System Integration company we consider the entire spectrum of data…..so our focus ranges from data extraction to data collaboration, data warehousing, data cleansing, data management, and also data archiving. So the way we look at data is to provide a 360 degree approach. Hence, with Qlik apps, Finesse enables enterprises to aid the decision makers in making the right information at the right time.”
Talking about their partnership with Qlik, Sunil states, “We have been associated with the BI industry almost from its inception in the region. We were involved even in bringing the first generation BI tools into the region. Qlik belongs to the new generation of Business Intelligence with various key features such as the associated search and attractive visualizations. Unlike traditional BI implementation, Qlik reduces the effort in implementation. With the launch of Qlik Sense, a new door of visualization is opened.”
In light of this, Eljo JP, Director Business Development, Finesse peppers his views on the 3 key phases of business intelligence. He says, “Phase 1 was previous day reporting/analytics, phase 2 was real time reporting/analytics and now phase 3 is ‘real’ time reporting or analytics, where the data is analyzed within mini or nano second time frame.” The real-time reporting is a relative term that may differ and depend upon the operative pattern of a company.
Moving further, one of the unique features of the recently launched Qlik Sense is its ability to fit into multiple devices like mobile phone, iPad, laptop or desktop— a very BYOD friendly application. BYOD being the tricky kid on block, has its own pros and cons to it. Talking about the Qlik Sense, John Sands says, “BYOD strategy is gaining pace as more and more organizations are looking into it as a cost effective business strategy. Qlik gives you the freedom to move from devices to devices. It fits into all screen sizes and it makes easier to implement and use it in the mobile environment because we understand that this is the age of mobile and we are consuming BI everywhere, at every time.” John definitely believes that security is a great factor in BYOD and poses a good challenge to the IT in securing the gates.
While Qlik gives you a competitive application, Finesse makes sure that it gives you the right kind of security. Eljo JP, says, “Finesse has a different set of tools for MDM (Mobile device management) wherein we have controls over all the security related aspects when it comes to BYOD. We are working with various leading vendors on this platform who are enabling us in creating a sustainable MDM model.”
Qlik believes that Business Intelligence is for everyone and it is tapping all the verticals equally. And being a system integrator, Finesse has seen the rise of business intelligence in the region. Eljo says, “If we study this region, Business Intelligence picked on from telecom and banking sector where there was huge data accumulation. It then moved on to the retail sector. Today we can see the public sector and healthcare sector as the latest adopters of the Business intelligence. With the growing landscape of Big Data and social media, the need for data analytics have soared…. Hence BI will gain more momentum now.”
