If there is one topic that the CIOs never get bored of, its the
data analytics! This technology has been at the top of the CIO list for
many years now. In the latest Gartner survey, CIOs were asked to name
the top differentiating technologies for 2018. Business intelligence and
analytics still continue to be their number one priority, with top
performers most likely to consider them strategic, says the research
agency. But other than being a usual suspect of the technology
discussions, what exactly is changing in the analytics space? Let me
borrow another fact from the same Gartner study. The agency states that
analytics can help the CIO and the IT organization to connect
to far-flung parts of the organization where they can cultivate new
relationships. And, this wind of change is exactly what redefines the
analytics space now.
The analytics market
today is not just about complex tools that can be accessed only by a set
of privileged data scientists. New solutions and tools available in the
market today enable even the business users to access and analyse data
to drive insights. This is a paradigm shift that literally 'unlocks' the
potential of data, while giving IT just the right control to keep data
secure.
Why Self-service Analytics
Organizations
do understand that data is the new oil and they have been investing on
tools that help them accelerate data-driven decisions. But the fact is,
the new data-related demands are posing greater challenges to the IT
departments. They already have their hands full with issues such as
security, access, storage and connectivity of growing data. As business
demands quick access and the power to understand that data, the
traditional BI tools simply create more work for IT and business
sort of wind up in a no-win situation in many organizations.
Modern
BI tools offer an alternative, as they are intuitive and easy to use,
and bring in powerful, deep analytical capabilities to the end users.
This is exactly why many smart CIOs have come forward by enabling a
governed approach to self-service analytics. It helps them maximize the
impact of data and became a strategic partner to the business by letting
go of the control, which never actually served any purpose in the
first place. Most importantly, CIOs find it a lot easier to get the
budgets allocated for these initiatives, because the business (and hence
the board) can quickly see the RoI in investing such tools.
What's in for the Partners
Gartner
predicts that by 2019, the analytics output of business users with
self-service capabilities will surpass that of professional data
scientists. This means that self-service tools will be a significant
part of the $2.03 billion analytics market in India in the next one
year. There is more use of modern BI tools that grew at almost 50 percent
within the last year itself while the traditional BI tools only grew
single digit. This is opening up a huge opportunity for many tier-2
solution providers who were considered to have no technical/sales
capabilities to take analytics to the market.
In
the next 12-18 months, organizations of all sizes in India will
actively encourage an analytically-savvy workforce and start investing
on tools that facilitate this democratization of analytics. The overall
analytics market is expected to see a remarkable growth with close to 24
percent CAGR! Solution partners are often skeptical about the prospects
of selling analytics solutions, merely because it called for additional
huge investments, the right specialists (who are very hard to come by)
and the sheer effort in presenting a compelling conversation to
customers. With data visualization and self-service BI tools, the tables
are turning. Many of our partners have leveraged their unique analytics
offerings to improve their share of wallet with the existing customers
and even get into competitive accounts with minimal effort.
In
the nearest future, new technologies like machine learning and natural
language processing are going to elevate the possibilities of analytics
even further, making it the ultimate thing to go after.