`The Ability to Attract Customers is not Headcount-Related'

1. What does Big Data and analytics have in store for SMBs?

We are trying to provide solutions to SMBs in our applications' business, not in our platform business. We are also yet to roll out Teradata's virtual cloud service in India. It is very clear however, that Big Data is playing the role of a leveller for SMBs. SMBs must realize that the ability to atttract customers is not related to your own headcount. For instance, for marketing purposes, you have campaign management software, which, using channels such as SMS and e-mail, can reach a large number of customers without requiring a large headcount at your end. For Big Data, there exist freely available technologies like Hadoop. SMBs naturally would tend to go for solutions that are low-risk yet high-return. However, the question is that although open source BI tools are freely available, their business value gets hampered because of the long-term maintenance reqruired.

2. What does the rising trend of Big Data mean for developers? What about their skillsets?

In the next 5 years, there will be a breed of `data scientists'. There is already a huge demand for the same in the US. Developers will need to know not just how to deal with the tools but also how to derive some value out of the data available at hand. In my opinion, people should get into acquiring skills related to analytics. Organizations will try to look for people by asking themselves as to which are the people which can create business value out of the data.