And so we approach the end of 2012. The world is still here, despite that little mix-up over the Mayan calendar, and summer at the beach is only a few days away.

Of course, year-end always brings lots of work - budgets to finalise, projects to complete, reports to write and holidays to cover. The Christmas break will be welcome indeed.

2012 has been a great year for Stellar. We welcomed 10 new staff, bringing our total to 25. On the "to-do" list for 2013 is a new team photo for our website!

Business Intelligence was embraced by more and more companies in 2012. We're seeing growing recognition of the importance of accurate and timely information in every aspect of business - from strategic planning to operational decision making, and we continue to evolve our product and service offerings to meet these varied needs.

It's also fair to say that at this point, despite the hype surrounding Big Data, we're not seeing a burning need for our customers to leap onto the crest of this wave. Major BI vendors, including Microsoft, SAP and Oracle, are rapidly expanding their product sets to incorporate the best and brightest innovations in the Big Data space, so our view is to let them do the hard work. By the time the opportunities offered by Big Data become a reality to most organisations, mainstream technology will be more than capable of rising to the challenge.

In the past few months, the hard work of our Stellar people has been recognised in a number of awards:

* In October, Stellar was named in the Deloitte Fast 50, as the 28th fastest growing company in New Zealand.

* In November, we were finalists in the Westpac Auckland Central Business Awards. Although the prizes went to some other great businesses, we were pretty chuffed to have been in the finals for two categories: Best Emerging Business and Excellence in Service Delivery.

* And earlier this month, Stellar was recognised as one of the 500 fastest growing technology companies (number 229 to be exact) across the entire Asia-Pacific region, in the Deloitte APAC Technology Fast 500.

With this sort of momentum, we intend to continue growing in 2013, and to bring Brighter Business Intelligence to even more New Zealand companies. Watch for the opening of a Stellar office in Wellington which, for us, means less time travelling and more time doing BI!

Thanks to all of you who have supported Stellar over the past year. It has been an honour to work with you and we look forward to seeing you tanned, refreshed and ready for success in 2013.

To close this holiday message: Blogger Timo Elliott on how Business Intelligence applies to selling Christmas Trees. Enjoy.

Best Wishes for a happy holiday season,
Grant, Travis, John and Grant

Stellar Consulting has been ranked in the Deloitte Fast 500 Asia Pacific technology companies list (at number 229).

Forty-five New Zealand firms made the list. In total, New Zealand had by far the highest representation per capita. Wellington-based businesses led the way with 18 making the index, while there were 17 from Auckland and five each from Christchurch and Hamilton - this is a top effort!

These results illustrate that for innovative Kiwi businesses the relatively small size of the New Zealand market is not a barrier to achieving stellar growth, as long as you get the business model right and remain true to your core values.

Increased digital connectivity and cloud computing have levelled the playing field for companies to achieve growth on a global scale and New Zealand companies are particularly adept at capitalising on this technology.

Being named to the Fast 500 Asia Pacific technology list is just the latest honour in a magnificent year for Stellar.

Our team have also claimed a spot in the Deloitte New Zealand Fast 50 (fastest growing NZ companies) and we made the finals in two categories of the Westpac Auckland Chamber of Commerce Business Awards.