Big data analytics set up in Wellington

UK, SINGAPORE, USA AND NOW WELLINGTON

Data warehousing and Big Data gurus WhereScape opened its Wellington office this week, 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. The office is opening with three staff, and is expecting to hire 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', and he is expecting to shake up the data analytics space in the capital.

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. He points to the company's already strong pedigree in local Government, health and financial services 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 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.

The company is a heavy investor in R&D, spending around 15% of its annual revenue each year. 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.

© Scoop Media