Big Data firm aims to “shake up” Govt market following Wellington office opening
- 16 February, 2015 04:05
Data warehousing and Big Data specialist firm WhereScape has opened an office in Wellington, bringing its software capabilities closer to the government market, along with increased support for an expanding private sector existing customer base including companies such as Xero.
Opening with three staff, with the expectation of hiring more, the company has what New Zealand and Australia manager David Morris calls a “highly successful and distinctly Kiwi approach to solving complex analytical problems.”
As a result, Morris says in 2015, he is expecting to “shake up” the data analytics space in the capital.
Echoing Morris’ comments, WhereScape CEO Michael Whitehead ponders the irony of the company having more government clients in Canberra than in Wellington, but expects a local presence to change that.
Pointing to the company’s strong pedigree in local government, health and financial services, Whitehead believes these stand as “contributing factors” in a potential boost of central government’s data analytics capabilities.
“The local team will be backed by the global WhereScape organisation with experience in traditional technologies such as Teradata, SQL Server and Oracle, as well as newer tools such as Hadoop, Netezza, Greenplum and Microsoft Analytics Platform System,” Whitehead confirms.
Whitehead says the fundamental objective of WhereScape’s data automation products (that build enterprise data warehouses, data lakes, data vaults and marts, and reporting systems that store, organise and access large volumes of information) is to enable companies to tame data quickly so they can make better business decisions.
“As a company we are heavy investors in Research & Development, spending around 15% of its annual revenue each year,” Whitehead adds.
“Funding from Callaghan Innovation fast-tracked some product improvements in governance and confidentiality capabilities that proved a deal maker for several new clients in the lucrative US health insurance market.”