October 2020
Glimpse into Future The Fuss about AI
Experts Opinion Open Source Trends to Watch for 2019 “Adaptive provides the most comprehensive data governance and metadata management platform available today.�
Jeff Goins CEO
Adaptive, Inc. Enabling Enterprises to Align Metadata with Enhanced Analytics The 10 Best Performing Big Data and Business Analytics Companies 2020
EDITOR’S NOTE
How AI and ML are changing business outcomes
D
oing business these days is almost like riding a rollercoaster. You’re strapped on, and for a start, things seem on an even keel till it suddenly starts to go downhill and just as shockingly fast, uphill, to the left, to the right and then a sudden an unexpected drop. You need nerves of steel, an empty stomach (for obvious reasons!) and a throat that can handle all the unexpected screaming. Rollercoasters are fun, aren’t they? Imagine the same for your business. Can you and your business handle all the stress day after day after day? You most likely would want prior information on what is likely to happen and take requisite corrective steps. But then is information in the normal order enough to predict and prevent upheavals from unexpected changes? Or is it insights you need to look at? If it is the latter, you do not just need information, as in raw data but actionable information in the form of trend, patterns, and predictions these days backed by AI itself coupled to ML. It is said to be the best course of action to stay ahead and stay positive. In doing so, it is said to bring about distinct and very identifiable changes in business outcomes. Read the below to know on how AI & ML are concepts that promise to change established business outcomes like never before. 1. Decisions based on data-analytics shall go the AI way! ‘Data is the new oil’, say those in the know. Like crude-oil, which is of little use to industry, so is undistilled data which is of use only when it’s structured and formulated to make sense. And that, given the volume and sources of data is the work of AI which using human-like intelligence, makes out patterns and trends so that accurate predictions can be made for businesses to exploit situations be it in times of famines or bounties. Every business, be it product or service-related has predictive patterns some which are easily identifiable while there are also those which though existing, are so miniscule and deep down that most people tend to over-look them. It’s only when an advanced system beyond humans which is AI, that the smallest blip in the horizon gets recorded as an event worth investigating and analysing. 2. Timely prediction of maintenance to increase asset life as also avoid accidents/complete breakdowns There was a time when it was a given that machines equated breakdowns with bigger machines undergoing breakdowns that
were costly to retrieve and invariably resulted in huge losses. To obviate the same came the concept of maintenance at fixed intervals. While the latter was a commendable effort to keep machines going that led to steady and often increased incomes, they also resulted in high maintenance costs, some of which were entirely avoidable. With the coming of IoT-enabled machines, both the objective of timely ongoing maintenance and that too at reduced costs, are achieved with data gathered from the IoT system that pass on the same to AI. This leads to a degree of assurance about the exact time when maintenance is required - sometimes even without the need to replace parts which are otherwise functional. All this results in huge cost savings, sometimes in doubledigit percentages! The concept of “fixed” maintenance is thus taking a back-seat and is being replaced with “JIT” maintenance. 3. The best way for the best “root-cause analysis” The concept of “Digital Twin”, an off-shoot of AI and ML is helping critical industries like marine engineering, aerospace and engine manufacturers take a different look at solving problems related to “root-cause analysis”. Engines, be it internal combustion or jet, typically require hours, days and months of testing to get parameters right, besides tweaking them to suit needs of speed, consumption, exhaust and maintenance. In such competitive times, engine makers are forever short of time, patience and resources, and need to get the details fast. To understand the issue at hand, one either depends upon legacy information or using
a mix of AI, IoT, edge computing and the likes, create a 3D copy of the engines in their entirety and test them while the engine is in motion. So, while an aircraft is miles above the earth, an exact replicate can be created that tracks and informs in real time on likely issues of design and part-quality. 4. Gathering feedback the correct way. Every new product from software to FMCG needs feedback to get better with time. Manual feedbacks don’t work especially when the quantum of users is very large. IoT based system or even an automated system of gathering feedback can then help organizations fine-tune existing systems. With information coming from varied resources including gadgets, emails and even devices, the only manner in which feedback can be gathered and analyzed in seconds is to use AI & ML-enabled systems which change business outcomes by providing the right insights in a matter of seconds if not lesser. 5. Repulsing cyber and virus attacks. The best strategies to repulse an attack, irrespective of its kind and sources, is when one has the benefit of hindsight, and that too of decent vintage. Something similar takes place with cyberattacks and viruses spreading in the digital domain. MLbased algorithms are said to record even the minutest details of every kind of cyberattack and can be a repository of information that may come handy in the event of coming under a virus attack. By knowing
things in advance, important details of organizations including patented information can be saved. Where AI & ML really comes on its own to help those being attack is by constantly scanning the horizon for any likely even which could include unusual activities pointing to a probable chance of an attack. 6. Finding and stamping out bugs A software despite the best of efforts of its creators can never be a water-tight system like a submarine. It’s only with time that its creators understand the need for corrections and patches so that essential data and systems can obviate a likely attack. And time, is the last thing the world has in plenty. With most organizations overloaded with their own work, they least expect their existing software to give way due to a gap that led a virus in. Probably the best way to obviate intrusions and stamp out bugs is to run the entire software and its codes thru the modalities of an AI system which can quickly and easily identify gaps and bugs which can then be deal with, with alacrity. This edition, The 10 Best Performing Big Data and Business Analytics Companies 2020, highlights companies that are leveraging these revolutionary technologies to deliver products and solutions that encompass the potential to the world of business. Also take a peek at the articles penned by experts from diverse industries and our in-house editorial team. We hope you enjoy reading this edition as much as we did while curating it for you!
Abhishaj Sajeev abhishaj@ciolook.com
COVER STORY
10
Adaptive, Inc. Enabling Enterprises to Align Metadata with Enhanced Analytics
ARTICLE
30
Tech Dynamics Why Aligning Your BUSINESS With Latest TECHNOLOGIES Is Important!
22 Glimpse into Future The Fuss about AI
C O N T E N T S 38 Leader’s Viewpoint Hyper Automation and no code AI are coming to rescue businesses
16 Comviva Helping the World Run Better and Improving People's Lives
24 Kamatera THE Most Promising Name in Cloud Services Sector
34
Vantage
Information Services
Integrating Data of Businesses to be Modeled, Visualized and Monetized
Abhishaj Sajeev Editor-in-Chief
CONTENT
Senior Editor Alan Swann Executive Editors Rohit Chaturvedi Alex Spellman
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October, 2020
Company Name
Featuring
Brief
Adaptive, Inc. adaptive.com
Jeff Goins President and CEO
Adaptive offers standards-based solutions that help organizations better align their valuable information by supporting specific management challenges including Data Governance, Data Quality, Metadata Management, Enterprise Architecture Management and IT Portfolio Management.
Vantage Data vantagedata.co.za
John Kogel CEO & Founder
With its advanced team of data scientists, analysts, developers and account managers Vantage Data captures, cleanses and integrates data to be modelled, visualized and monetized.
Kamatera kamatera.com
Gal Farchi Partnership Manager
Kamatera is a global cloud services platform provider, providing enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure products to organizations of all types and sizes.
Comviva comviva.com
Amit Sanyal Chief Operating Officer
Comviva is the global leader of mobility solutions catering to The Business of Tomorrows.
HYPERS hypers.com
Tony Sun, Co-founder GM of Digital Marketing
HYPERS uses cutting-edge technology to help brands gain insight into consumers, realize intelligent user asset management and operation, and ultimately drive rapid business growth.
CERTUS SOLUTIONS certussolutions.com
Brian Allen Director and CEO
Certus Solutions is the leading IBM systems integrator across Australia and New Zealand.
MSRCosmos msrcosmos.com
Devi Kondapi CEO
MSRCosmos provides software solutions, products, & services to some of the world’s leading brands & companies from various verticals.
Bluemetrix bluemetrix.com
Liam English CEO
Bluemetrix is a full-service data consultancy offering advisory, implementation, managed services, training and data control applications.
Dimension Data dimensiondata.com
Grant Bodley CEO
Dimension Data is a global technology integrator and managed services provider that helps its clients achieve great things and create new possibilities through the use and adoption of technology.
cBEYONData cbeyondata.com
David Schmidtknecht CEO
cBEYONData specializes in Business Intelligence, Data Analytics, & Business Automation Solutions
Adaptive, Inc. Enabling Enterprises to Align Metadata with Enhanced Analytics
Jeff Goins, CEO
“
Adaptive provides the most comprehensiv e data governance and metadata management platform available today.
About the Leader Jeff Goins CEO
“Adaptive eliminates the risky, time-consuming, and expensive side of managing corporate information.”
Jeff Goins has been responsible for developing alliances with firms on an international basis around the world. He continues to be a thought leader in acquiring and packaging technologies that meet key needs in the compliance, governance, and risk analysis markets. In his twenty-five year career in the technology industry, he has led companies to a high level of success in developing quality software solutions.
n any given day, we make decisions that direct the course of our day and often without putting much thought into the action per previous experiences and habits. These daily decisions slowly turn into a routine based on the experiences they generate for us. We love repeating decisions that gave us good experiences and avoiding bad ones based on such experiences.
O
ensuring Knowledge is retained as systems evolve.
For a business, these experiences are based on its data that it generates throughout its functioning processes and people, whether related to clients, vendors, employees, or shareholders. And if an enterprise is wise enough, it will utilize this data to generate information that helps it make better decisions. Business decisions, backed by data, metrics, facts, and figures are known to give better results and help enterprises achieve their goals.
Give a brief detail on the company’s inception and the journey it has experienced. Adaptive has been in the data governance, metadata management, enterprise architecture, and data analytics market for many years. This has brought us a vast amount of industry expertise and knowledge in delivering enterprise-scale solutions enabling our clients to implement our offerings rapidly.
Companies today are faced with an explosion of the amount, complexity, and importance of enterprise information. And, without a complete understanding of how that information is created, defined, managed, and consumed — otherwise known as metadata — an organization’s ability to meet external compliance reporting demands and optimize business performance is severely undermined.
Adaptive’s suite of software solutions leverage a powerful core set of modeldriven and data-driven web-based solutions that can be hosted on the cloud or premise. Adaptive is one of a few vendors that offer a complementary and integrated repository solution enabling ongoing agility, governance rigor, and full reach across the analytical spectrum.
Helping enterprises navigate through data and make sense out of it is Adaptive, Inc. The company provides the most comprehensive data governance and metadata management platform available today. Adaptive offers standards-based solutions that help organizations better align their valuable information by supporting specific management challenges including Data Governance, Data Quality, Metadata Management, Enterprise Architecture Management, and IT Portfolio Management while
Jeff Goins, CEO of Adaptive, Inc. shares insights into how the company provides innovative solutions that enable enterprises to align their capabilities with strategic intent leveraging governance processes on how to effectively maximize the value and understanding of data.
Our platform and solutions provide the flexibility to address the most pressing and complex operational and analytical needs. We employ cutting edge technologies to ensure our solutions meet all performance agreements, infrastructure dependencies, and faulttolerance requirements including graph databases, data streaming, Big Data, semantic inferencing, advanced cybersecurity AI applications and many more. Our platforms support a dataindependent approach to solution
development enabling a wide degree of customization. Our platforms permit users to discover, learn, engage, analyze, and prescribe using rulesbased, semantic, and pattern matching techniques based on their data or industry standard models. In no time at all, organizations can quickly derive knowledge and build upon it using their rules or industry best practices. Our vision is to become the de facto data analytics platform that compliments the existing information and technology technologies already being leveraged by our clients. Describe your approach to attracting your target audiences for their better experience. Many of the Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics solution providers do not combine the holistic metadata and instance data layers in their offerings and are not architected to fit within the technology landscape already being used by the organization. This causes long and costly implementation time frames. Adaptive is focused on delivering value quickly by leveraging the cloud or onsite installations working with the technologies that are already being leveraged by the organization. Adaptive also brings in industry content with our solutions which facilitate assessments on the current state of the organization’s data landscape including providing governance processes to ensure the proper stakeholders are involved in the process including audit trails and change management work flows to ensure accuracy and repeatability. Adaptive focuses on specific use cases relating to regulatory compliance mandates focused on data quality and understanding of how data is moving throughout the enterprise.
“
Adaptive’s repository is a culmination of two decades of development leadership setting the standard for enterprise-class model-driven development.
The Adaptive platform leverages a powerful graphbased platform combining metadata and actual data allowing organizations to quickly understand the source, quality, and relationships of their data landscapes. Our solutions take out the issues and unknowns of their data and bring in the audit trails and change management processes to ensure the right stakeholders are involved in the process. Our clients can start by leveraging our product capability to create a holistic data catalog to ensure governance and understanding is current and leveraged across the organization. Key capability offerings include our Data Catalog, Data Privacy, and Data Lineage Analytics offerings. We consistently provide our clients to be up and running in just a few short weeks with incremental enhanced capabilities added per customer directives. Could you throw some light on your mission and vision statement? Adaptive exists to help organizations realize they do not need to reinvent themselves, rather, they can benefit from leveraging what they have in the most optimal manner to provide a knowledge management asset that facilitates reuse, analytics, and compliance throughout the organization. Fundamentally, Adaptive aims to couple operating silos, align structured and unstructured data sources, bridge logical/physical/ETL and Business Intelligence applications, derive and apply meaning through Ontologies and semantics to provide true enterprisewide insight, planning, governance, and capabilities management across people, functions, processes, and resources. What endeavors your company is planning to undertake in the upcoming future? The combination of best practices, industry content reference data, leveraging model-driven and datadriven capabilities including unstructured data, along with machine learning will continue to evolve enabling Adaptive to be at the forefront of capability on understanding and managing the complexity associated with data governance and analytics. Adaptive will continue to work with leading consulting and integration firms who specialize on providing enhanced analytics.
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| October 2020 |
W
ith customer centricity, innovation and ethical corporate governance at its core, Comviva Technologies Ltd. is among the leaders of mobility solutions providers and cater to over two billion platform users globally.
Comviva is propelling the digital ecosystem through its mobility solutions. Let’s find out how in an exclusive interview with Amit Sanyal, the Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Consumer Value Solutions business at Comviva. Below are the highlights of the interview: What led to the inception of the company? Initially, finding a foothold in the Indian telecom market was quite a challenge for the company. Its start in 1999 was rough, as it was competing with brands like TCS, Satyam, and Wipro, etc. However, the company’s flexible attitude and stubborn adherence to the target opened new vistas. It then proceeded as an incubation within the Bharti Group, with the aim of leveraging the IT boom spearheaded by Sunil Bharti Mittal. Comviva has come a long way since then, driven by its zeal to make a difference. Comviva merged with CellCloud Technologies Limited in 2002 and in 2005, obtained venture capital funding, Sequoia Capital and Westbridge supported by Cisco, were roped in as investors, and thus began its success story. Could you shed some light on your company’s mission and vision? Comviva has kept itself relevant over the years by constantly transforming itself from a VAS company to a global leader in mobility solutions with focus on Mobile Money and Payments, Analytics and Data Monetization, Digital Lifestyle and Messaging. We have been at the forefront of technology and innovations right from our inception. Our solutions and services are aligned with strategic technology trends to enable telecom operators and Financial Institutions to provide value added services to their customers. We are making mobile payments easier, entertainment better and internet and broadband solutions faster by enhancing the overall experience. Describe your company and its cutting-edge mobility solutions which address all the needs of your customers. In today’s telecom industry, service providers across the globe are witnessing an unprecedented rise in volume, variety and velocity of information (“big data”) due to the next generation mobile network
Helping the World Run Better and Improving People's Lives 17
| October 2020 |
and grow with a consistent focus on development that also yields great business results. With world-class training processes and modules, the company offers various unique policies which make it the best place to work while also unleashing entrepreneurial desire and capabilities of its employees. Our Flagship programs like Internal Career Opportunity (ICO) offer all eligible employees an opportunity to grow or change their role within the organization while PII - Promoting Intrapreneurship & Innovation program encourages all employees to follow their passion. What is your idea of Corporate Social Responsibility? We are very much focused on Social Responsibility. All our CSR initiatives are known as Compassion. Our Compassion Club members are core CSR volunteers who go on the ground and help the company achieve its vision to demonstrate our commitment towards the common good of society and community. We engender a sense of empathy & responsibility amongst our employees to motivate them to give back to the society. We partner with group companies to promote quality education for the underprivileged sections of the society. We also support causes related to the sustainable development of green environment or topical events adversely impacting a large section of the society. rollouts, increased use of smart phones and rise of social media. Thus, it is imperative for operators to shift their focus from mass market to hyper-personalized engagement. This is aimed at increasing the relevancy and timeliness of their offers. Hence, an effective engagement strategy spanning the entire customer lifecycle from acquisition to retention to re-activation would help achieve quicker returns on investment along with enhanced revenue.
What are your company’s future aspirations? What strategies are you undertaking to achieve those goals? We have carved a very large market for ourselves and are focused on how to add incremental value for our customers. We are constantly focusing on creating something new so that they can either reduce the cost or increase the revenue on a year earning basis. We always look to see which way the market is booming and find ways to constantly evolve in newer areas, from content to recharge, to mobile payment to analytics. The future plan is profitable growth, but more importantly, to add incremental value to customers.
Our MobiLytix™ suite is a big data driven mobile analytics solution that enables in generating hidden customer insights to drive revenue growth and superior customer experience.
About the Leader Amit Sanyal is the senior vice president and chief operating officer of the Consumer Value Solutions business at Comviva, which includes Real-time
Describe in detail about the work culture and the values that drive your company. Comviva provides a culture of innovation to its employees with freedom to explore, learn, innovate,
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| October 2020 |
Marketing, Customer Loyalty, Digital and Machine Learning modelling-based Marketing Analytics driven software solutions. He is responsible for the unit’s Global Profit & Loss, business strategy, business development, product management, R&D and product development and managed services through a globally diverse and highly motivated team.
“Adding incremental value to the customers constantly by being relevant in evolving market trends is the mantra to survive and sustain with the uniqueness.”
A marketer with over 18 years of work experience in the telecom and internet service provider spaces, Amit has also worked with various industry leaders such as Bharti Airtel and Sify Technologies in a multitude of marketing functions across the Product Management, Usage and Revenue/Retention and Value Added Services domains.
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THE Most Promising Name in Cloud Services Sector
Gal Farchi AďŹƒliate & Partnership Manager
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| October 2020 |
A
s per studies conducted by Forbes, approximately 1.7 MB of new data is generated every second. This speaks volumes of how we, as end-users, are consuming exponential amount of information and that data is possibly omnipresent.
The big players in the could sector have and continue to charge clients on traffic-based revenue models that are difficult to understand and where resources are not properly utilized. Users do not have visibility and do not know what they are being charged for and the overall processes are vague. This is where Kamatera brings its unique competitive values, allowing clients to choose the exact services they need and charging them only for what is being used.
The technology that stores, processes, and analyzes this data is undoubtedly known to us all. The current stage of evolution of this technology, essentially know as cloud Computing, has opened the doors to innumerate possibilities in the digital world.
As such, we are able to offer more flexible and customized Cloud Services with 24/7 human support in order to make the services clear and accessible to all clients.
There are a profound number of companies operating in the cloud computing sector providing a plethora of innovative cloud services and solutions, aiding the development and success of their clients. One such prominent name in the cloud services sector is Kamatera.
Kamatera’s range of scalable, flexible cloud infrastructure products include: Cloud Servers, Cloud Storage, Backups in the cloud, Private Cloud Network, Cloud Load Balancer, Cloud Firewall, Fully Managed Cloud and we have recently launched “Kubernetes as a Service” based on Rancher - an open source, multi-cloud, non-vendor lock-in Kubernetes Management platform With two decades of experience, we do not aim to specialize in just one element of cloud computing; we simply created a one stop shop for a business to be able to architect and deploy their ideal infrastructure strategy through our infrastructure platform. Our prices are competitive, our quality and performance are high, and our products are flexible. Moreover, we offer a highly interactive customer service, becoming an integral part of our customers’ team, helping clients achieve their business IT goals through our expertise and commitment.
In an exclusive interview with CIO Look, Gal Farchi, the Affiliate and Partnership Manager at Kamatera, briefs us about the company’s stronghold in the cloud services market. Below are the highlights of the interview: Brief our readers about Kamatera, its mission, and vision. Kamatera was founded as a response to an existing and growing market need for cloud hosting services, more specifically a need to move from physical servers to virtual ones. In the early days OMC Group, its parent company, started by providing IT services. From providing large-scale IT Services they realized the need of moving services to the cloud in order to decrease the use of resources and maximize efficiency without compromising on performance.
Brief us about your cutting-edge cloud services and solutions which address all the needs of your customers. With more than 13 data centers worldwide, we provide cloud services focused mainly on VPS Hosting, serving tens of thousands of global clients
Kamatera’s vision is to help companies and individuals worldwide gain cost-effective, userfriendly, and transparent access to cloud services. 25
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including start-ups, application developers, SaaS Providers, Technology Resellers, Hosting, ISP, Telecommunication providers as well as small to large professional enterprise clients worldwide.
two brothers – Yohay and Asaf Azulay. Even though the company has more than 100 employees now, we try to maintain the same family and warm environment values which Kamatera was structured upon.
Today Kamatera operates one the largest VMware based Public Clouds IaaS in the world, supporting tens of thousands of customers globally who are relying daily on Kamatera's cloud infrastructure and 24/7 expert support team. Our fully certified & compliant ready 13 Top Tier Data Centers across 5 continents empowers Kamatera customers to activate virtual machines anywhere across the world in minutes. With our 20 plus years of expertise, access to the most advanced technologies, and a high level of customer service, Kamatera customers are simply able to achieve more for less.
The environment with the employees is very open and every employee can always approach the CEO or any other Management level Executive with any request or idea. We are very attentive to our partners and there was more than one occasion in the past that a certain Data Center was established due to a partner’s need. We believe that the combination of providing our clients with great services while being attentive and transparent, is key to our success. What are your company’s future aspirations? What strategies are you undertaking to achieve those goals? Our aspiration is, regardless of whether it is a
Describe in detail about the work culture and the values that drive your company. Kamatera started as a family business founded by
We believe that the combination of providing our clients with great services while being attentive and transparent, is key to our success.
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company or an individual looking for a Virtual Private Server Hosting, Kamatera will be their first choice.
For print design purpose Client testimonials “Thanks to Kamatera and their professional support team we were able to build a stable and scaled infrastructure for our customers and products worldwide.” - Sharon Greenberg, CEO, Agura
The strategy is to offer users a product that will perform great, will be affordable and will answer the client’s needs. Thus, we are using the following strategies:
“The choice of Kamatera was for the abilities and qualities of their cloud services and online support team that rocks.” - Tzahi Zohar, Founder & CTO, The Video Point
• Fully customized and tailored-made services • Unlimited scalability – the user can scale up or •
• • •
down any services he needs 30 Day free trial – every user can try our platform for 30 days for free and can cancel the services anytime without any additional fee Billing options – our clients can choose if they want to be billed on a monthly or daily basis 24/7 Support– human support by email phone and live chat Quick deployment of more than 40 apps and services with just 1 click
We have been looking for a good hosting provider and found Kamatera. Since we have joined the company we never looked back. Finally, we could experience hassle free, professional hosting service to cover all our needs worldwide. - IT Manager, Mano Maritime
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Why Aligning Your BUSINESS With Latest TECHNOLOGIES Is Important!
I
f there’s one thing that differentiates the present times from the past, and which with time, shall become ever prominent, it’s the speed at which technology and related products become faster, and at the same time which turns existing technologies redundant and obsolete. Quite akin to a tsunami wave, technology almost overwhelms everything with its sheer size, volume, and abilities! And the one who don’t align with it run the risk of either being run over by it or injured in material ways.
technology does. It comes on the back of the most convenient and latest of technology and enhances the experience of the user. Increases efficiency (IoT and edge computing) In the field of automotive component manufacturing, machining, and turning of stamped and forged parts play a major role. Till a while back these were done on different machines with human interfaces. There could be one or more human operator placing the job/piece/part from one machine to another. This arrangement resulted in reduced speed of work with output which had far lesser accuracy. Ÿ
Today we give you some reasons for aligning your business with the latest technology and why doing so is very important.
IoT, edge computing, and robotization has completely done away with the human interface and in the bargain brought in higher speeds of output at higher efficiency and quality. In some cases, with no or very limited human intervention necessary, the size of the equipment too has reduced drastically thus saving space and giving entrepreneurs more area for higher output.
It saves time What would you prefer, drafting an email or tying a WhatsApp message? Agreed the latter does not give you the kind of bandwidth the former does in terms of using language constructively and conveying a lot more, but given the speed at which the latter operates, and gets messages, pictures, videos and music across, you can’t really turn a blind eye. Ÿ
Ÿ Gives more options to do the same thing Take the example of WhatsApp versus emails, the former is a chat platform that also lets its users use telephony, live face-to-face video chats and even recording in place of just typing and sending message. With the facility to attach files of various kinds, it gives users the ability to do the same activity in different formats which not only increase the chances of getting things done better and faster, but also increases the quality of output!
If you do, chances are that competition could blind you shortly. There was a time (it still does) when email marketing was the norm. Till WhatsApp came about and blew it away. How? Because of its speed of sending messages and speed of receiving responses. And best of all, it remains so approachable. You just have to open an app and see your messages! And that is precisely what new
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Tech Dynamics
Ÿ
Better & higher work-related output Till a decade back, the only way to send pictures, drawings, sketches etc was through fax. This meant that both receiver and sender had to have things like a fax machine, thermal paper, telephone line etc- with no guarantee that the output would be of desired quality. If the telephone lines were busy or down, the communication would invariably get affected.
Ÿ
Accessibility (cloud) Older technology is invariably machine specific. Also called legacy system as opposed to the cloud, this stymies the user’s chances of accesses beyond certain means. Most legacy systems being office or space-specific, accesses were through particular places (like offices) and only to specific people. Moving anywhere beyond meant loss of connectivity and all its unintended consequences.
Then came email attachments and a printer-cumscanner which changed the whole paradigm! Now there was no need to wait for telephones and telephone lines! With the net being independent of any one medium of accesses, communication became much faster and clearer! The process though is far from over with newer things always on the horizon.
The Covid-19 pandemic and quite some time before it showed the ill-effects of giving limited accesses to important systems- precisely where the new has a healthy edge over the old. No being aligned with the latest thus hobbles the chances of growth because accesses to important things become limited in most old systems. 31
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Data security & ease of handling Data is the lifeblood of any enterprise, and more so, critical tech and finance-related ones. It thus makes immense sense to move out of legacy systems and stay in sync with the latest in data security systems. It’s a given that older systems could be heavily compromised given that their architecture and loopholes would be known to the world of hackers and mischief-makers.
old. By owing an older version, one can be open to being swayed and swindled by those who know of loopholes and how to use them. Also, trying to reenforce older systems don’t come cheap. If the system is quite old, either they won’t have adequate or healthy patches, or that exist could be ill-fitting with glaring gaps which could be used to pilfer data or infect it.
Ÿ
Patches for old systems may be known only to select few who might take advantage of their situation as ask for the moon in return for help. In all, an old system, even though very efficient could be very expensive to maintain. Expense could also be in the form of specific hardware on which it runs. As against this, the latest technology invariably runs on the latest hardware and systems which by present standards could be costeffective in the foreseeable future.
Most dated systems, despite patches belong architecturally to older versions which by their very nature could have loopholes that are difficult to closely entirely. In the light of these, data can be secured by remaining aligned with the latest technology which into the foreseeable future has systems that are hard to crack. Cheaper (legacy v cloud) When it’s about technology, the idiom “Old is gold” doesn’t work, simply because a the latter version uses cleaver means to do away with the ills of the Ÿ
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VANTAGE
Information Services Integrating Data of Businesses to be Modeled, Visualized and Monetized
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ost analytics companies start with technology, whereas Vantage Information Services Limited starts with the business, specifically what creates ROI, and works back to the technology. Vantage was founded to bring best in class analytics to the business user. It was set up with a mission to build best in class technology that operationalizes data driven decisions and deliver value to organizations through data analytics. It leverages its business experience and uses proven approaches to create value from data and enhance client profitability. Using proprietary processes for prediction and analytics, the company turns its clientele's raw data into actionable insights on demand.
where Vantage comes into the picture. It envisions creating technology that bridges the substantial gap in the market today that every company struggles with i.e. how to enable teams to make data driven decisions as part of their everyday workflow. Flagship Technology At the heart of Vantage is its flagship technology, Vantage Point that operationalizes data driven decisions and connects business users with other business users across their company's network of clients and suppliers. The technology enables the communication of value via KPIs that can be set at any level of the organization, autogenerates tasks with ML models at a user level, allows users to understand why that task was generated for them by diving into the data, and measures ROI from completing that task. Vantage Point modules are plug and play deployments – no code, no long implementation times, and include subject matter such as Sales Analysis, Inventory Analysis, Customer Analytics, HR Analytics, and Financial Analysis.
Enabling Businesses to Make Data-driven Decisions Vantage believes that technology companies have done a great job at building amazing technology for the power user. At this stage, the messaging of these companies to the market is “become a citizen data scientist”. What these technologies are missing, and what Vantage Point solves for, is the fact that these companies have teams of people which are hired to perform very important functions, and not to learn how to code or data model or to become a data scientist. They don't have time to spend hours searching through dashboards to explore the data. They need answers and recommendations on what to do next, so they can combine these recommendations with their expertise in a seamless manner, and then understand the ROI impact of their decisions. This is how analytics can be driven to every person in every organization and this is
An Inventive Mind The person behind the inception of Vantage Data is its CEO, John Kogel. John has accumulated an enriching experience of 10 years, which was focused on leveraging data analytics to enhance portfolio returns while minimizing risk. In 2014, he began developing his own suite of analytics, generating outsized returns for his investment strategy. On the back of this, he saw an
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John Kogel CEO & Founder Vantage Information Services Limited
Vantage's core technology, Vantage Point, operationalizes data driven decisions and drives interactivity across an
organization's network.
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opportunity to expand these analytics beyond the scope of finance to industries including retail and manufacturing, and started Vantage.
current market opportunities, and it is part of our mission to ensure that we continue to drive avenues where we share our platforms and skills, particularly with previously disadvantaged individuals and communities.”
As CEO and Founder, John drives the strategy and technology vision of the company. He plays an in-depth role in the product development of Vantage's flagship product, Vantage Point, actively works on continually building and developing great customer relationships and a great team. He is focused on making and shaping a culture of efficient, data driven investment decisions based on ROI across his business and clients' companies. Besides, he holds a Bachelors and Masters degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT.
Changing the Way Companies Operate & Communicate Vantage aspires to change the way companies fundamentally operate internally, and how they communicate with each other externally. There is a massive gap and therefore universal inefficiency in how companies operationalize data driven decisions. Vantage builds technology to bridge and eliminate that gap. Ultimately, it does not only want companies to do this with their own data, but to incorporate their customers and suppliers into their Vantage Point network, thereby driving more seamless cooperation, enhanced ROI for all parties, and data monetization.
Core Values Vantage has experienced significant growth and evolution over the last 5+ years by shaping a fast moving, high performance culture, all of which is underpinned and measured through its values of Collaboration, Agility, Catalyst, Diversity and Innovation. These values all relate to each other to drive success. Diversity is the underlying difference matter though. The company is of the belief that with collaboration and agility, one can drive innovation and change. Diversity however is the fuel that makes the engine run. Without differences in background, thinking, and approach, any company will struggle, and ultimately fail, to create a product that differentiates against today's market.
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Focused on the business user, Vantage Point starts with ROI, and
works back into the technology, to
Giving Back to the Community
achieve an efficient and data
Speaking about CSR, John asserts, “Corporate Social responsibility is a key focus of our business as the principle of “enabling” is core to who we are at Vantage. We recognise that not everyone has access to the tools, knowledge and technology that will allow them the best foundation for the
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Leader’s Viewpoint
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