Michael Belakhov, joined SAS Australia and New Zealand as General Manager, Enterprise Business Intelligence in February, 2005.

Michael brought to SAS a deep and broad understanding of the business intelligence market, having been co-owner and CEO Sales and Marketing of EBI Solutions, a business intelligence consulting company. Prior to that he was Managing Director of Business Object Australia, taking the company from its starting point of barely $30,000 per annum to revenues in excess of $12 million.

In his current role, Michael is responsible for managing the comprehensive range of SAS solutions covering data integration, analytics and business intelligence. A key role in this management is working with staff and customers to demonstrate how organisations can best exploit their BI investment to gain distinct competitive advantages in increasingly smaller global marketplaces.

Given the breadth of solutions that fall within Michael’s area of responsibility, he plays an instrumental role in working with Practice Managers and marketing personnel on establishing consistent and cohesive go-to-market messaging for Enterprise Business Intelligence.

As one of the local operation’s primary BI evangelists, Michael is a regular presenter at SAS and various industry events. In 2006 alone, he is expected to deliver presentations at approximately 80 separate events, making him one of SAS Australia & New Zealand’s more widely recognised BI authorities and spokespersons.

Among his other various roles in the business intelligence and IT industries, Michael has spent time as Regional Information Marketing Manager for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and one of Australia’s first sales representatives for Informix.

It is Michael’s depth of experience in this region’s business intelligence industry – its issues, solutions and challenges – that marks him as an authority regularly sought for comment by the Australian and New Zealand media.