While artificial intelligence has become a buzzword in the technology world, SAS, one of the largest data analytics firms, believes the term AI is overhyped and AI adoption is still in the early or even planning stages for most enterprises. In a conversation with BusinessLine , SAS co-founder and CEO James Goodnight talks about how the cloud could take analytics and AI to the next level. Excerpts:

You say AI is just another buzz word that’ll last another four years. But what does this mean for SAS? Is it just hype?

AI is certainly being hyped as another buzzword, and there are many companies rushing to jump on the AI bandwagon. Despite the hype, AI is a significant emerging technology that will continue to grow in importance. Not just for SAS and our software-development efforts, but for our customers too, as they look for new approaches to solve challenges with massive amounts of data.

I call it a buzzword because so many vendors are using the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ to describe analytics problems we’ve been solving for years, such as applying predictive maintenance to machinery and identifying credit-card fraud. It’s true these applications require very powerful analytics, but now they are being lumped under the catch-all term ‘AI’.

AI, powered by advanced analytics, is giving organisations an edge. Through a development partnership with SAS, for example, SciSports is helping football clubs in Europe and Brazil with AI and advanced 3D imaging. SciSports (a football analytics company) uses 14 cameras around the soccer pitch to track every player’s move. This includes 3D reconstruction, which analyses previously untapped data such as how high a player jumped for a header, what foot he used to score a goal, and more. This advanced data collection means the company can analyse how well a player is performing in real time and make in-game recommendations and training adjustments.

Where do you see SAS going forward from here?

The fact that we’ve been able to take every algorithm we’ve ever written and figure out the best way to run it in parallel with many machines — it creates a path forward for us that we can take enormous advantage of as we move all of our solutions onto this platform. Our Visual Investigator tool is already there on this platform and we use that for intel about what’s going on inside a company — who’s trying to fraud an insurance company; we can see all the players involved in a scheme.

How important is India for SAS, in terms of revenues and R&D?

SAS India has consistently earned double-digit revenue growth in recent years and is one of the fastest-growing markets for SAS in the Asia-Pacific region.

India is an attractive market for SAS analytics because it possesses two critical factors for growth: talent and market potential. India has a young and educated workforce equipped with problem-solving skills. And many Indian enterprises are on a strong growth path and need analytics to make data-driven decisions.

With recent investments in modern facilities in Mumbai and Delhi, SAS has more than 500 employees in India, the majority in R&D roles. The SAS India team helps us develop and deliver advanced analytics software to customers in a host of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, telecom, energy and government.

How are you working with the Indian government on Digital India initiatives?

Digitisation has found a place both in government and corporate agendas in India, and has led to an exponential rise in data. Transforming this data into insights through analytics is our goal. We’re already seeing early fruits of the combination of digitisation and data analytics.

And while Indian manufacturers have lagged behind global peers in adopting a digital culture, the Internet of Things has generated much excitement and is an area we are exploring with more mature organisations.

For example, in the government sector, agencies have increased investments in fraud detection and containment, are working to improve the tax base, and have tuned in to public sentiment to provide better citizen services. Among the agencies of the Indian government, we work with the Central Board of Direct Taxation, Chief Ministers’ Offices, Transport Departments, and Sales and Commercial Taxes Departments.

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