Desan Naidoo appointed Vice President SAS Africa region

Desan Naidoo has been appointed as the Vice President of the analytics and software and services company SAS Africa region.

“There’s a hunger for analytics in Africa but it’s a very different market to South Africa,” says Naidoo. “For starters, a lack of analytics skills is preventing adoption in many African regions, so that will be a focus for us. We need to build an ecosystem of ongoing upskilling and training through partnerships with universities and our customers. But at the same time, organisations are facing business challenges that they need help solving right now, so we’re enabling our channel ecosystem to ensure they have the skills to support our customers. It’s all about finding balance.”

“Everyone is talking about analytics now. As SAS, we have to continually evolve to stay ahead of the pack, which is why we’re evolving to an open platform, focusing on cloud and managed services offerings in this vast region. At the same time, we know that we can’t be everything to everyone. Africa is a rapidly changing market, albeit one that is still about three years behind South Africa on analytics adoption,” says Desan Naidoo. “I like to think of our strategy as being similar to the way in which a cheetah hunts. Even though it’s the fastest land animal, it can only sprint for a short space of time before it gets tired. So it focuses on its prey, gives it everything it’s got, and is not distracted from its mission. Our strategy in Africa will be similar. We can’t go after everything that moves. We know what we’re good at, we know what the market requirements are, so we’re identifying our target customers and focusing our attention on making a difference in their business.”