FIFA World Cup ’22 was one of the best examples of how data was converted into information and information into actionable insight. One of the enablers to make ‘informed’ decisions was sensor enabled footballs that were used during the matches. With 12+ dedicated cameras to track the ball movement and close to 28+ data points for each player, 50 times per second, to calculate their exact position on the field, served as a great supporting tool for video match officials and on field referees to call out ‘Offside’ for the players during the game. With the right amount of datapoints collected and analyzed realtime it reduced the need for lengthy replays to establish whether a player was offside. Sample datasets for similar nature were then fed into the AI system to prepare what the football industry now knows SAOT(Semi automated Offside Technology).

All these technologies across sports have resulted in data explosion and Enterprises are not spared either as each of them are constantly wanting to increase their market share in today’s highly complex and competitive environment. Clearly, big data has become bulk data, and data-driven solutions are transforming businesses worldwide.

Navigating the Techade, India has already started leveraging the power of Data, Business Intelligence & Analytics across businesses. MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is the largest independent publicly traded analytics and business intelligence company. The MicroStrategy analytics platform is consistently rated as the best in enterprise analytics and is used by many of the world’s most admired brands in the Fortune Global 500. MicroStrategy is on a mission to help the country’s business realm fully leverage the advantage of Business Intelligence & Data Analytics.

Whether an SME or an ecosystem of startups or conglomerates, every business in the subcontinent has varied needs with a single goal in mind to get better at what they do and increase their wallet share in the Indian market. MicroStrategy is obsessed with facilitating this. CIO Insider engages in an exclusive interaction with Sunil N. Vadgama, Sales Director India, Micro Strategy, to explore more about the company’s latest and exciting endeavours in the country.

What are the opportunities that you
foresee in the Indian market?
Business Intelligence is not about pretty Visualization. It is about Governance, Scalability, Performance, Agility, Security and Data Definition Standardization. More over, it is about discovering insights in a governed manner (aka self-service and support for information consumption via multiple mediums) with the right layer of security built into the system for ease and the right level of access. Technology or platform built for today should be open architected so as to consider the changes that may kick in after a decade in the technology space.

With a plethora of data ecosystems driven by point solutions, the invention and reinvention of a stronger data storage ecosystem, and the ever changing world of Cloud and next generation technologies such as Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, MicroStrategy’s Enterprise Business Intelligence platform is well poised to be the effective & scalable ‘Information Nervous System’ for Enterprises. We help them continue to support the ever changing demands of business users by de linking the technological aspects & business demands in Business Intelligence & Analytics space.

India’s Cloud story is unique where most of the Enterprises are going Hybrid, and MicroStrategy is ready with its Native Cloud story too. Whether onpremise or Cloud, MicroStrategy’s value proposition from an Enterprise Business Intelligence perspective remains strong, innovative & performance oriented.

India is part of the emerging markets for MicroStrategy. We are here to create a different experience for our end customers. The average age of Indian customers retained with MicroStrategy is nearly 9.5 Years a retention rate of 96 percent, which is amazing. For us, this only means that we will keep on re-inventing ourselves by closely working with our customers.

to allow organizations to convert data into information and then into actionable insights and eventually help them seamlessly consume these insights within their existing trusted systems, we have moved this needle up significantly to almost 70 percent. Everyone within an organization should leverage data and information. We continue to drive this initiative where we’d like the data consumption patterns to go north of 90 percent.

How would you define Micro Strategy’s performance in the Indian market so far?
Our consistent efforts since 2011 have allowed us to support organic growth in the Indian market. With our robust Sales & Presales functions, we have chiseled ourselves into a successful Enterprise Business Intelligence company for the local market. We cater to a wide variety of industry segments in the Indian market ranging from Startups to Regulatory Bodies, Manufacturing, Banking & Financial Services as well as Pharmaceuticals. Our OEM partners are growing in India especially the ones who have pointed solutions in the BFS space. We now have our own Development Centre in India, where a strong group of Micro Strategy certified consultants assists our local, regional, and global customer base in increasing the overall effectiveness of their MicroStrategy applications.

Exiting 2022, we added a good number of net new customers in the region and have a strong trajectory and execution plan for Year 2023.

Indian organizations often have India centric challenges. Tell us about your ability to help organizations in the subcontinent with actionable insights and innovations.
India is a unique country. I strongly believe India has been leading the technology innovation and is always a pioneer of innovative solutions. Traditionally, Indian business users have kept increasing their demands from IT teams, especially when it comes to enterprise revenue generation. These demands are often steeper & non traditional something that comes with years of learning and on the ground experience. While there are set processes in place to tackle such business demands speed and agility are crucial for technology enablers.

MicroStrategy’s platform delivers the required & sustainable foundation to these demands with speed & agility, thanks to our next-gen Enterprise Business Intelligence Software. With Modern Analytics, we build applications from scratch in minutes, promote content to departments in under an hour, and scale personalized content to the enterprise in under a day). With Open-Architecture, we deploy environments in minutes (in your data center, your Cloud, or our Cloud) with an open, extensible, and platform & Cloud agnostic solution. Our Enterprise Platform engages the best tools services, methodo logies, practices, and education to deploy Federated Analytics Transformational Mobility, and HyperIntelligence throughout an enterprise.

Today, just offering products or services don’t often cut it for organizations. They are looking for overwhelming experiences. How do you satisfy this constant need?
We continue to innovate on the platform and technology side and constantly strive to deliver a bigger and better customer experience. No customer goes untapped (regardless of size) by my team. Each Customer in India gets a single touch point from our strong Professional Services team via MicroStrategy’s Enterprise Support Program.

Every MicroStrategy customer benefits from this program and its adjoining Advisory Services. In parallel, Sales & Presales functions ensure a once a quarter touch point to exchange ideas & learn from one another. Our extremely matured internal processes allow us to document these learning and eventually have a stronger impact on our customer base either through the next release of the software or our growing team in India. There is more! Our customers can utilize Connect Live or on-demand with a MicroStrategy expert in multiple languages and discuss their challenges. We strive to provide a Five Star service experience for all our customers.