SAP, Oracle and HP 'don't get' big data, claims Massive Analytic chairman

George Frangou, CEO of the AI-based analytics firm, tells Computing that bigger rivals 'don't get it because the driver for them is to sell kit'

Large IT vendors such as SAP, Oracle and HP don't understand how to properly help their customers to make the most of big data, being more concerned about locking them into their ecosystems than providing them with true analytical insight.

That's according to George Frangou, excecutive chairman and founder of "precognitive data analytics" platform Oscar AP, which Frangou described as "an AI that allows people to foresee the future and the outcome of their decisions" which "makes Minority Report real".

"[In the film] you had Precogs, these people with a psychic ability to see the future," he said. "We've accessed some obscure mathematics and stats to provide that kind of precognition. It's a machine intelligence which combines these algorithms in such a way that allows you to see future outcomes in a much more accurate way."

It's an area in which Massive Analytic sees big growth potential, because, according to Frangou, larger competitors such as SAP, Oracle and HP "don't get it" when it comes to making the most of big data and analytics.

"They don't get it because the driver for them is to sell kit. ... You're into millions of dollars before you start," he said, attacking the aggressive sales tactics of the big vendors, which he said are designed solely to sell the product and not to provide support.

"And by the way, the actual algorithms don't scale either, so you're into lots of people and manual intervention," he added.

Because of this, Frangou said Massive Analytic is "quite unashamedly following a displacement strategy to displace the incumbents because they're not getting it". He added that SAP HANA, Oracle Exalytics and HP Haven are essentially the same product because they're built on the same base code.

Frangou went on to describe his experiences consulting for a utility company which he argued were an example of how the larger vendors are just interested in pushing their products on to customers, not providing them with better software such as big data tools.

"One of the transformation programmes that I ran was smart meters and smart meters generate large amounts of data," he said, explaining that an analytical tool was required to crunch the data. Rather than research the market, the utilities company only considered SAP because so much of its ecosystem was already based on that technology.

"The big player in there was SAP and I was running the strategy as a consultant. I asked 'have you thought about these other companies' but I was told ‘we've got to do it with SAP'," he explained.

"SAP isn't going to do it for you, it'll increase your costs because you've got to buy the kit then integrate it. Wouldn't a cloud solution help?" Frangou suggested, but was told "it's got to be SAP", despite that vendor being less cost efficient.

For most organisations cloud-based analytics are the answer, Frangou said, although he acknowleged that some hurdles remain.

"The issue is getting the data up in the cloud in the first place. The cost of processing it is quite high and prohibitive," he said. However, cloud-based big data analytics is growing. "It's the way to go", Frangou concluded.

The big vendors are frequently blamed for offering poor value to customers. Oracle was recently accused by a rival of "brutish" sales tactics that "show disregard for customers" and of "putting profits above gaining customers' trust".