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Business News/ Companies / People/  Big data is a game-changer: TCS’ Satya Ramaswamy
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Big data is a game-changer: TCS’ Satya Ramaswamy

Big Data has become one of the top initiatives of TCS, says Ramaswamy

TCS is building a large Big data team at Silicon Valley in California, US. (TCS is building a large Big data team at Silicon Valley in California, US.)Premium
TCS is building a large Big data team at Silicon Valley in California, US. (TCS is building a large Big data team at Silicon Valley in California, US.)

But how big is the TCS big data team?

At TCS, we believe we have one of the biggest big data and analytics team in the world, not only in size but also in talent. We have a training programme for big data, which we formally started one-and-a-half years back. Some of the players in the space like Cloudera Inc. (develops open source software on big data) is a pioneering start-up in the space. Cloudera now collaborates closely with TCS and we have the largest pool of Cloudera certified big data experts in the world. We have people who can talk in-depth about the origin of big data.

So what kind of products is TCS developing for big data?

Big data is one of the top most initiatives for TCS today. Our CEO (N. Chandrasekaran) has been articulating in every instance that he strongly believes in it. In big data, we are building products by placing a lot of emphasis on intellectual property development. It is a key part of our strategy in this fresh new space. The typical barriers you see in mature space are not there in big data, we are finding that it is an open space that is not occupied and we are creating IP (intellectual property)-led products there. We are conceptualizing these products in Silicon Valley with entrepreneurs there and then building it with our global engineering team in India as well. We are hiring entrepreneurs who have great ideas and we are building products based upon their entrepreneurial talent. We have very big ambitions for this space.

To what extent are companies spending on big data projects?

We commissioned a big data study (The Emerging Big Returns on Big Data, released on 21 March) to understand this space better and found that 53% out of 1,217 companies surveyed had a big data project and the other 47% will have a big data programme by year 2015. Some of them could be cautious as there are challenges like cultural issues (approving big investments), organizational issues (sharing information across organization) or technological issues (ability to handle large volume of data). One of the reasons we went out and did this research to understand why are people holding back? Now we have identified what these problems are. Currently, we have consulting offering around big data. But we have lot more insights now which we can leverage to have a very strong consulting offering for customers. We don’t just want to grow ourselves but help the industry grow, give direction with these insights.

What are the other important insights of the big data study by TCS on its potential?

Big data is a game-changer. Customer want to implement big data because they have a performance barrier where big data can help them move up the bar. We had a gut instinct that it could but our survey clearly says it is so—46% return on investment is a powerful thing for clients. We will apply all that to make it a big part of TCS offering.

But in which division at TCS does big data fall under?

The larger picture is the digital space consisting of mobility, big data, social media, cloud, artificial intelligence and robotics. In this broader space, big data has a separate team which reports to me and I report to the chief executive officer. We have a team for mobility also. But cloud is fairly spread out because it has an infrastructure play. Social media too is integral part of everything we do. I also oversee the artificial intelligence, robotics and big data team. We also have a large analytics team like knowledge process outsourcing team and traditional analytics like business intelligence and performance management. Collectively, we have one of the biggest teams in the world.

Why has TCS set up its big data division in the US?

We believe big data is a global phenomenon and we are right at the source of this movement. We are positioned in Silicon Valley, which is the epicentre of big data when it was implemented by companies like Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Every single start-up here is contributing to the phenomenon and we at TCS contribute back by hosting meet-ups in Santa Clara. We are creating a global team from Silicon Valley and scaling it up rapidly.

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Published: 09 May 2013, 09:17 PM IST
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