We participated in another successful Informatica World conference the week of May 11-15 in Las Vegas. This was Saama’s third time sponsoring the event, which was sold out this year. Informatica continues to be a strategic partner for Saama and we always find a lot of value in the opportunity to connect with customers, partners, and others at this important conference.
We also find that Informatica’s promise to “deliver practical, actionable guidance” rings true. We especially enjoyed the keynote by Sohaib Abbasi, CEO of Informatica, and found a number of issues that he touched on really resonate with what we’re seeing in the industry, hearing from our customers, and where we’re going as a company.
“All Things Data” is Becoming a Reality
The theme of last year’s Informatica World conference was “All Things Data”, and this trend continued this year, with Abbassi discussing the need to “master all things data”, which involves gaining control over Data Preparation, Master Data Management, Data Integration, Data Security, and Data Governance. More and more, companies are realizing just how much data is out there…at times it can be overwhelming. We’ve referred to this concept as a “deluge of data”. It represents a great resource, yet it is so vast and many struggle with not only how to “get” the data, but more importantly, how to make sense of it. At Saama, we’ve often said that data and analytics (D&A) is our DNA. We’ve got a team of really knowledgeable data scientists and have been doing this for 17 years.
Collaboration Across Roles Driving Innovation
Abbasi talked about how collaboration across all roles including: Data Scientists, Analysts, Business Users, Developers, Architects, Security Architects, Security Analysts, and Data Stewards is driving innovation and unification. This is something we’ve certainly found to be true—especially concerning innovation. In the past, we talked about the concept of a tension between traditional inside out (long-term IT-driven infrastructure projects) and outside in (shorter-term business-driven projects) data and analytics initiatives. It is exactly this kind of tension that helps spur innovation. What we’re finding is that IT and the lines of business are starting to come together to seek answers to common business problems through data and analytics. What both groups are seeking is an efficient and effective solution that can be up and running quickly and start providing real value in a short time. Saama Fluid Analytics Engine™ helps solve this issue—with a proof of concept in a few weeks and delivery in a few months.
Disruptive Technologies Continue to Change our World
Abassi also talked about disruptive technology trends such as Cloud, Interaction, Predictive, Pervasive, On-Premise Computing and how they are changing the world that we live in. We agree that these technologies continue to have a major impact, but we have only scratched the surface on some. For example, predictive analytics solutions such as Saama Predictive Churn Analytics can be used across any industry and functional area, including marketing, sales and customer service. Saama’s solution can deliver actionable insights into areas such as marketing campaign performance, customer upsell opportunities, and identifying customers at risk for defection. We actually developed a churn model for a prominent networking company that was able to predict customer churn 90 days into the future. This is important because a 2% churn reduction can generate between $2-3 million of additional revenue per year! Predictive analytics is a game-changer, but not many companies are fully realizing this yet. We “predict” (pun intended) that this will change in the near future.
Were you inspired by anything you learned at the conference? We’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to learn more about how Saama partners with Informatica, or about any of our many solutions and services, don’t hesitate to contact us.
