Global analytics software and services company SAS has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Altron, giving the company exclusivity for the public sector.
A first for SAS in the South African market, it says that this landmark partnership will see Altron establish a dedicated SAS business unit within its Bytes Systems Integration (Altron BSI) operation to sell and licence SAS software to support both the public and private sectors in industries such as financial services, retail, healthcare, education, and revenue services.
Mteto Nyati, Altron group CEO, points out that the strategic partnership between Altron and SAS will empower customers to make informed decisions through analytics in critical areas of business such as workforce management, detection of fraudulent payments, public safety information to keep watch on offender crime rates and patterns, immigration violations and the like.
“When data is correctly processed and analysed, it is possible to make predictions about behaviours, potential risks, fraud and likely outcomes,” he says. “For example, predictions made by means of an algorithm could be used to adjust the deployment of police services to address challenges of citizen safety and security in South Africa.”
Desan Naidoo, SAS vice-president for Africa, adds: “As Altron is a proudly South African company with an extensive customer base and deep local expertise, this partnership will enable us to deploy our solutions into the market with speed and agility to help our customers transform their data into intelligence and insights. It also illustrates the synergies between us – we are the global leader in advanced data analytics, while data analytics is one of Altron’s focus areas for growth as a business.”
He adds that the partnership between Altron and SAS would be built on the principles of mutual value, complementary value proposition and the shared commitment to provide extended value to our customers and the public sector community.
“We are already providing a breadth of technology solutions to our customers and this partnership with SAS will expand our offering in data analytics. Our customers will receive end-to-end solutions for their data analytics requirements,” Nyati says.
The global business intelligence & analytics market is poised to grow to $26,78-billion by 2020, with strong emphasis and growth predictions in regions such as Middle East and Africa where it is expected to reach between $3,8-billion and $4,2-billion in the same period.