Teradata chooses Pakistan as regional hub for human capital

LAHORE: Teradata has significantly invested in Pakistan as the global leader in data analytics believes that the country has brilliant human capital and hardworking people, said its top executive.

“Teradata invested in a global development capability in Pakistan while many companies have done most of that in India only,” Stephen Brobst, chief technology officer for Teradata told The News in an interview.

Teradata, since its arrival in Pakistan as a part of NCR Corp in 2000 and as a separate company since 2007, has played a significant role in Pakistan’s progress in various IT interventions. 

It has invested in the universities for curricula, provided free software and courseware, helped the professors develop the right content and create talented graduates and then hired those graduates directly or sometimes indirectly through their customers. 

The company built a development centre in Islamabad and grew that from small numbers to hundreds of people. More recently, the company has developed a centre in Lahore, which already is half the size of its Islamabad centre.

On the current state of data usage and the future trends, Brobst said in the past the data was more coming from core banking system and customer care centres. “In the future, we talk about this big data technology, which includes sensor data, social media data, click-stream data, so it adds a lot more diversity,” he said. “The internet of things and sensor data is the next big thing as it will enhance business understanding.”

Teradata’s CTO has a very pragmatic view regarding the heated debate over data acquisition and the right to privacy. Commenting on what amount and the extent of consumer data should be extracted, he said, “It is the consumer who should be empowered to make that decision.” 

He acknowledged that majority of the people don’t bother reading the terms and conditions before subscribing to a free service or an app that grants rights to the data usage. “It is the media’s job to help people make an informed decision about what amount and kind of data they are agreeing to provide when they download a simple app, sign up for a social networking website, etc,” he said. “Not necessarily in a negative tone but more like a balanced view with pros and cons.”

Brobst said the world is now shifting from a system where the companies own the customer data and use it to make intelligent choices for them (customer relationship management) to the phenomenon where the customer owns their data and decides who to share it with (vendor relationship management). 

“People talk about privacy a lot, but they throw that all away for the simplest most basic of free stuff,” he added. “Anybody who was surprised by anything revealed by Edward Snowden was delusional; no important person was surprised by anything that came forward… it (however) led to some important steps like encryption.”

Teradata’s executive further said the country’s telecommunication sector is at or ahead of the global standards because of the fierce competition.

“We’ve seen some very good stuff particularly in the Punjab in terms of the data usage in improving healthcare system, especially in the dengue disease control,” he said. “The local technology has been exported to Malaysia and Thailand.” He is also against the over-regulation by the government.