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The opportunities made possible through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Analytics were brought to life at the annual AI Roadshow held recently in Rosebank by analytics leader SAS.

Several key business makers, media, and civil stakeholders attended the event to gain insight into the current state of the analytics market in South Africa and how analytics, cloud and AI could be leveraged to gain business value.

Speakers at the roadshow included SAS South Africa Country Manager, Akesh Lalla, IDC South Africa Senior Research Manager: Cloud/IT Services, Jon Tullett, alongside panels which showcased real-life inspired use cases on operationalising analytics and roundtable discussions on Cloud analytics strategy with the likes of Microsoft SA’s Chief Marketing & Operations Officer, Kethan Parbhoo.

Keynote speaker Anders Indset kicked off the event with a bang, encouraging delegates to think differently, ask questions and always put people first in order to gain real value out of technology like AI and use it to solve real problems. Indset is one of the world’s leading business philosophers who aims to show leaders how to cope with the 21^st century by bridging the philosophy of the past with the technology and science of tomorrow.

“Intelligence isn’t enough, today we have to look at the world from a different perspective because the world is changing and never before has the gap between generations been bigger,” said Indset. “People don’t buy products and services, they buy relationships, they buy stories, they buy magic.”

Delegates were then able to learn about how to make use of SAS’s flexibility, cloud-readiness and Open Source compatibility to help take AI out of the lab and generate true business value during SAS Business Operations Director, David Cosgrave’s poignant presentation on evolving the analytics platform and getting choice and control with SAS.

“The first thing that everyone in analytics currently is looking for is flexibility with the rise of new models, Open Source languages and quickly downloadable packages but how do you have flexibility while also keeping control of the process?” Cosgrave asked attendees. “By moving analytics to the cloud while embracing and unifying Open Source and proprietary data science platforms into a unified, governed lifecycle.”

With the AI Roadshow, SAS aims to provide decision makers with the knowledge they need to exceed, the understanding they need to proficiently incorporate analytics and AI into their business and the experience of new and interesting innovations within the tech space through speakers like Indset and last year’s keynote speaker Neil Harbisson – the first human cyborg to hear colour.