At the launch of SAS' High Performance Analytics Centre of Innovation: (From left) Mr Bill Lee, Managing Director of SAS Singapore; Mr Ronnie Tay, CEO of IDA, Mr Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS.

Business analytics software and services company SAS has established a High Performance Analytics Centre of Innovation in Singapore in anticipation of a surge in global demand for capabilities in this field. The centre, the first of its kind in Asia, will develop, market and deploy applications and help to position Singapore as a global leader in High Performance Analytics.

“Singapore’s forward-looking recognition of the importance of business analytics in fuelling innovation will help make it Asia’s leading centre of High Performance Analytics. This brings with it economic advantages for Singapore,” said SAS founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mr Jim Goodnight, who was in Singapore for the launch of the centre on 10 July 2012.

The centre is supported by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), which has identified data and analytics as a strategic focus area and aims to develop Singapore as an international data and analytics hub.

The setting up of centres of innovation is part of a move to establish trusted, scalable platforms and enablers for the data and analytics ecosystem in Singapore. The SAS centre, for example, serves as resource for enterprises to tap on for guidance on deciphering data for better business planning, and helps further inject innovative capacity into the analytics environment, said IDA’s CEO Mr Ronnie Tay.

“We hope that the centre can also spur the generation of intellectual property in analytics through co-development with local infocomm enterprises, Institutes of Higher Learning and research institutions,” he added.

As part of its integrated approach to developing Singapore as a data and analytics hub, IDA is also looking into building a pool of infocomm talent, trained with an interdisciplinary set of skills and knowledge to perform jobs in this area.

A recent study by Frost & Sullivan projected that more than 2,000 additional data and analytics professionals will be needed in Singapore over the next three years, who are armed with critical skill areas such as large scale data mining, predictive modelling, risk management and real-time decision making using analytics tools.

Besides developing new diploma and degree programmes with Institutes of Higher Learning, and supporting the relevant training and certification initiatives, IDA is also addressing the manpower demand by collaborating with companies to provide fresh graduates with exposure to the data and analytics field. For example, it is working with SAS to roll out a Business Intelligence and Analytics Programme under IDA’s Company-Led Training Programme. This fast tracks fresh professionals’ capabilities in data integration, data mining and analytics, to ensure that they are ready to take off with a data and analytics career.

IDA also recognises the need to drive the adoption of data analytics in key sectors, so that businesses are able to make effective use of data and make informed decisions to drive productivity and profitability.

Towards this end, IDA awarded a Call-for-Collaboration for Sectoral Business Analytics Shared Services in May 2012, aimed at lowering the barriers to adoption, and enabling ICT companies to enrich and increase their capabilities in delivering data analytics via a shared services model. The focus of these early adoption efforts will be on selected economic sectors such as healthcare, insurance, food and beverage, and retail and wholesale.