Reseller DTP goes global with big-data practice
Firm expands big-data analytics business to Australia and US along with partner HP
Reseller DTP Group is hoping to put its big data analytics practice on an international footing by expanding it into the US and Australian markets.
The Leeds-headquartered firm founded its big data subsidiary three and a half years ago. The unit provides solutions which monitor student behavioural patterns in order to give educational institutes prior warning about students who may leave, founder of DTP Howard Hall said.
"When the university fee structure changed from £3,000 to £9,000, retention became a much higher priority and the solution was developed and it seems to be pretty world-leading. There seems to be no one else competition [wise] doing it as we are doing it, hence why we are getting the opportunity to take the solution into other geographies," Hall said.
The big-data practice – DTPSolutionpath – was engineered by DTP, which owns its intellectual property. It is sold as a software licence for a fixed term and uses student data, gathered from logon times, swipe-card access and other sources, to provide customers with dashboards of information about which students are at risk of dropping out.
In the UK it has been sold through DTP's core vendor partner HP, and HP's partners, and it is delivered as-a-service by DTP.
Hall said this big-data practice is now being rolled out in Australia and the US, alongside HP.
In Australia DTP is using HP's direct sales force to sell the big data solutions to educational customers and Hall said the firm is now conducting a proof-of-concept exercise for three universities in the country.
While in the US DTP is working with HP's sales teams as well as developing a partner network by teaming up with enterprise resellers who focus on education, to sell DTP's big data solutions across the country. Hall said DTP has already signed up two US universities for a proof-of-concept.
"The reason why we go back into HP is because they have a worldwide sales organisation and in the early days we decided we weren't going to establish our own sales force, we were going to leverage HP's direct sales force. In the UK we sell through HP, in EMEA we sell through HP and in Australia we sell through HP," he said.
"In the US we have a slightly different model as we are starting to build a partner network out there, so we sell through a combination of HP and partners."
DTP is not planning on opening offices in either region, but Hall said the firm intends to recruit two travelling staff, one in the US and one in Australia by the end of the year.
He also indicated that following its establishment in Australia and the US, DTP plans on expanding its self-funded big data business into the Netherlands, the Middle East and also to New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore.
For its latest financial year, to the end of June, DTP's revenues were just shy of £40m following eight per cent top-line growth, Hall said.
As well as HP, DTP is also partnered with VMware, Citrix and Microsoft.