AgreeYa Logging Big Growth With Big Data

It's a busy time for Folsom, Calif.-based software solution provider AgreeYa Solutions, which is banking on big data to grow its business over the next few years as it eyes expansion.

The company's client roster covers a broad swath of public and private enterprises in industries that include telecom, financial services, health care and utilities. Its services are organized around four core offerings: social, mobile, analytics and the cloud.

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It's the last two of those business segments that AgreeYa Managing Partner Ajay Kaul sees as business growth drivers in the near term.

"A lot of focus is on business intelligence and analytics and now with big data being another area of focus and interest for a lot of mid- to large-size businesses, it's an area where we are helping organizations really define strategy -- help them define and architect and then implement those solutions for customers," Kaul said in an interview with CRN.

Kaul cited predictions made by research firm Gartner late last year, forecasting that business intelligence and analytics would remain top of mind for CIOs through 2017, as additional support for why AgreeYa is ramping up focus on that corner of its business.

Businesses that have been implementing various systems are now stopping to ask themselves how data gleaned from there can be used to deliver better results.

"That's where the whole business intelligence and big data piece comes in," Kaul said. "A lot of the focus had been on reporting, but it was more about taking the data and presenting the data. Now, what we're talking about is building intelligence around data. ... Today, people in organizations are getting data from websites, social media, through their emails, through their sales campaigns and if you go into the Internet of Everything, you're talking about machine-to-machine data. So all this data is coming in and what do you do with this? That's what big data is about. It's being able to put your hands around that data and really slice and dice that data."

Analytics services is expected to bring in about $2.5 million to $3 million in revenue for AgreeYa this year and Kaul projects it to grow by at least 150 percent next year.

It's still a smaller piece of AgreeYa's overall business today, but it's expected to grow to about 20 percent of the business in the next three years, according to Kaul.

NEXT: Collaboration And Mobile Still Seeing Strong Growth

The company's cloud business, supported by its VDIXtend Desktop-as-a-Service, also is projected to see growth driven by BYOD and by the increase in the number of remote workers. AgreeYa launched VDIXtend last year and is now looking to position it in the market, Kaul said.

AgreeYa currently has more than 1,100 workers companywide across its 15 offices in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, China and Poland, among others. It recently opened an office in New Jersey and is eyeing additional openings this year in California, Atlanta and Texas.

Although analytics and big data is the up-and-coming business segment for AgreeYa, the largest piece of the company's revenue pie continues to come from collaboration and mobile, which makes up roughly 60 percent of the company's business and it's on track for growth this year and next.

AgreeYa's SocialXtend, which it launched about two and a half years ago and debuted an updated version at the SharePoint Conference in February, helps an organization's customers, employees and partners interact with one another across multiple locations. SocialXtend is based on Microsoft's SharePoint technology.

Kaul said the company initially had to educate prospective customers on the benefits of the solution, but progress is being made on SocialXtend's deployment.

Roseville, Calif.-based USA Properties Fund has been working with AgreeYa since February, helping the real estate developer implement SharePoint and has one more department to convert, according to USA Properties IT Director Mike Stanford.

"We didn't have enough hardware. It wasn't configured correctly. We had a mess," Stanford told CRN, describing the situation before AgreeYa was hired.

AgreeYa is now helping USA Properties move its data center, where it will be hosting the company's hardware, monitoring its servers and providing call center support. The move is expected to be completed by the end of the month, Stanford said.

"They're an easy company to work with. There's a mutual respect between both technical groups, so it's refreshing to know that you've got a partner that listens to you, so we value them."

Once that move is completed, Stanford said they're looking at working with AgreeYa on future initiatives that include business continuity and disaster recovery.

PUBLISHED JULY 1, 2014