Discriminating IBM i Shop Taps Quiterian for Marketing Analytics

March 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

Station Casinos knows a thing or two about the IBM i server. The company has used the platform for the last 20 years to run its collection of casinos (currently 18) in the Las Vegas area. So when one of its most experienced RPG programmers praised predictive analytics software developer Quiterian, it made the news, so to speak.

Station Casinos was on the hunt for new data analytics and mining tools so it could do more profiling of its customer base and craft more profitable marketing campaigns. The company, which runs its core property management, gaming, and financial systems on IBM i servers, already had IBM Cognos reporting tools hitting a Teradata database, with a healthy dose of Informatica ETL to keep all the data in synch.

But the casino wanted something a little easier than Cognos and Teradata for its non-technical employees in the marketing department to use, and that led it to Quiterian, a developer of marketing analytics software that’s based in Barcelona, Spain.

Quiterian Analytics utilizes a columnar, in-memory database, which the company says enables it to support a large amount of data without the complexities associated with OLAP cubes. The company says its software provides a graphical environment that helps users identify patterns and trends hidden in their data.

The trial of Quiterian’s software went well for Station, according to Jeff Martin, Station Casinos’ business intelligence director. “I have an iSeries RPG programmer that is very experienced and can be quite critical of software products,” Martin says in a press release. “He was very impressed with the speed of the Quiterian product once our data had been loaded.”

The casino purchased Quiterian Analytics, which was installed by three people over a five-day period in December. Quiterian business partner Endowance Solutions was also involved in the implementation.