Talend, the global big data integration software leader, has announced that Lenovo has chosen to implement Talend Big Data, a native big data integration solution optimised for the modern big data platforms. Here Marc Gallman, manager of data architecture at Lenovo, provides answers to some key questions about the deal.
TechRadar Pro: Can you give us some brief background information about Lenovo?
Marc Gallman: Lenovo is a US$39 billion (around £25 billion, AU$45 billion) personal technology company, the number one PC maker and number four smartphone company in the world, serving customers in more than 160 countries. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, our business is built on product innovation, a highly-efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution.
TRP: Why did Lenovo choose Talend for big data?
MG: We chose the solution to help us understand our customers by acquiring datasets from a variety of touch points – including third parties, social networking feeds and APIs. We realised that we would start to see valuable returns by transforming this data into a visual picture of the end-to-end customer journey, which has the potential to bring significant benefits to our marketing campaigns.
TRP: How were you specifically looking for the solution to improve the way you manage your marketing campaigns?
MG: We wanted to streamline the integration process and the delivery of data reports used in our marketing to analyse campaign effectiveness. Talend's extensible architecture and user-based licensing model gave us the flexibility and versatility we were looking for while still providing us with room for further growth.
TRP: How are you using the solution today?
MG: Using Talend Big Data, we have nearly 300 data integration processes running at the same time against a multiplicity of data types and sources, and we expect these numbers to keep rising as we develop the approach.
TRP: Can you outline the key benefits you have achieved using the solution?
MG: We have achieved many benefits already. In terms of cost savings, we have saved about $140,000 (around £90,000, AU$160,000) in initial migration costs alone. In addition, Talend has helped us improve reporting performance and cut certain process times by a matter of hours to minutes. The ease of use of the Talend platform also allows us to deliver on requests to continually increase our velocity in acquiring data
These increases in efficiency ultimately result in faster, smarter decisions that positively impact our marketing strategies – both regionally and globally. With more rapid and frequent access to data, we can make quick changes to our campaigns.
