The future of Analytics: AI and Machine-learning Take Centre-stage at SAS Analytics Summit

Event aimed to enable regional organizations transform into an intelligent enterprise

SAS, the leader in business analytics, hosted the SAS Analytics Summit at the One & Only Royal Mirage in Dubai. In an age when analytics is the cornerstone of smarter decision-making, this one-day event aimed at helping regional organizations capitalize on data to gain greater business insights and develop advanced capabilities to innovate.

“Data is the starting point of the next wave of innovation. In today’s world of hyper-personalization, digitization, and the transformed customer experience, businesses cannot gain a competitive edge without capitalizing on analytics through machine learning and artificial intelligence” said Shukri Dabaghi, Vice President - Middle East and Eastern Europe, at SAS. “Unanalyzed data is an opportunity missed, and we at SAS are committed to empower, enable, and ensure that organizations in the Middle East transform data into intelligence, react to business insights, and make streamlined decisions to achieve their broader objective.”

Themed ‘Bring the Analytics Economy and AI in Action’ the event opened with a keynote titled, ‘The Renaissance of our Species’ by Neil Harbisson, the world’s first recognized cyborg. SAS experts discussed various ways organizations can foster innovation through analytics, improve customer service by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine-learning, and more, endorsed by speakers from SAS customers such as RAKBank and Turkcell.

According to the Worldwide Semiannual Big Data and Analytics Spending Guide from IDC, the Big Data & Analytics spending in Middle East & Africa is expected to reach $3.20 billion in 2020. As data explosion expands the scope of productivity and innovation across industries, capturing real-time business insights is critical to drive competitive differentiation and create new revenue channels and it has become imperative that organizations leverage real-time business insights, so as to transform into businesses of the future – in line with the regional digital agenda.

Since data is the constant element in this digital economy and business intelligence serves as the foundation to gain competitive advantage, SAS addresses the challenge of drawing real value from data.  Through this event, SAS extends advanced capabilities to analyze large volumes of data and enable organizations to uncover trends, build and execute digital strategies, and enhance the overall customer experience.