"If you think of a company,
which has lots of customers and lots of data, it is probably a Teradata client,"
says Teradata CTO Stephen A Brobst.
KARACHI: Pakistan was not on the radar of global technology companies back in
the day when they rushed into India in search of affordable and competent human
resources. But Teradata was an exception. An American company, which provides
analytic data solutions like integrated data warehousing, big data analytics and
business applications, Teradata invested heavily in Pakistan despite reluctance
from within the company, according to Chief Technology Officer Stephen A Brobst.
“I was one of the people pushing for (investing in Pakistan). Everybody was
running to India, which is bigger and certainly more advanced technologically.
But Pakistanis are more agile with technology compared to Indians,” he told a
select group of journalists on Monday. The first client of Teradata in Pakistan
was the government itself. It helped the National Database and Registration
Authority (NADRA) build a repository of data for all citizens, which is now
being used for multiple purposes. With a staff of over 500 people in Islamabad,
Lahore and Karachi, Teradata now maintains a “significant presence” in Pakistan,
says Brobst.
“Almost all the telecom companies, major banks and beverage companies are our
clients. If you think of a company, which has lots of customers and lots of
data, it is probably a Teradata client,” he said, while refusing to share actual
revenues the company generates from Pakistan every year. Teradata’s revenues
from its global operations in 42 countries were $2.3 billion in 2011. The
company’s website says the number of its implementations worldwide is in excess
of 2,600. “The number of Teradata implementations in Pakistan is in tens, not
hundreds. We target only the largest banks, telecoms, airlines, etc,” he says.
But have Teradata’s revenues from Pakistan been tapering off because profits of
both telecoms and banks are no more increasing as rapidly as they were a few
years ago? “Don’t confuse their revenue growth with our revenue growth. When the
times get tough, they need analytics even more,” Brobst observes, adding the
years following the global financial crisis, which wreaked havoc on big banks,
were Teradata’s best growth years as far as its clients from financial services
are concerned.
“When everything is going well, nobody has to do anything different. It’s when
the times are tough, they need to get smarter. And to get smarter, you need
data. So tough times are generally good for our business,” he adds. Brobst says
businesses that are highly competitive in nature – such as telecommunications
and banking in Pakistan’s case – generate revenues of analytics companies like
Teradata. “I have friends in Pakistan who have three SIM cards and they rotate
them within a single handset. It’s not something done in most economies. That’s
extreme competition, and that’s very good for us,” he says.
Teradata also manages its Afghanistan and Bangladesh operations from Pakistan.
“We are focusing on growing Bangladesh now. Sri Lanka is a potential next step.
We’re doing some business in Afghanistan already, but it’s not nearly as mature
as Pakistan,” he says. Brobst is one of the 12 Americans appointed to Barack
Obama’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, which is tasked with
giving recommendations on where and how the government should make investments
to improve the quality of life for American citizens.
Citing his experience of serving on the council, he says the use of data to
improve the quality of healthcare is insufficient in both Pakistan and the
United States. “Healthcare costs are increasing faster than GDP, and having
sophisticated data is the only way to have higher quality healthcare at a low
cost,” he says.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 26th, 2012.