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by Technology
SAS 9
With SAS 9 this will change, with SAS introducing conventional business intelligence products, ranging from OLAP (whose server has been re-written to provide better performance) to production reporting and from spreadsheets (which provide full security and audit trails for Microsoft Excel environments) to dashboards, for different constituencies that spread across the organisation. In particular, the company has introduced new user interfaces for different users. Whereas previously it was limited to specialists and business analysts and it has now extended its focus to include power users and business users.
– IT-Director.com, “SAS 9," Philip Howard, March 31, 2004
(Philip Howard, Practice Leader, Bloor Research)
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The SAS Intelligence Platform is built on a standards-centric architecture," said Ian Charlesworth, senior research analyst at Butler Group. "Scalability and reliability are further ensured via new features such as multithreading and distributed computing, or grid computing capabilities."
– DM Review, “New SAS 9 Software Revolutionizes the BI Industry," March 31, 2004
(Ian Charlesworth, Senior Research Analyst, Butler Group)
“The SAS 9.1 business intelligence platform is built on a standards-centric architecture, with scalability and reliability ensured via features such as multi-threading and distributed grid capabilities.”
“SAS, whilst historically known by many as a provider of complex business modeling and statistical analysis tools, has possessed the ability to address data quality within the context of a BI strategy for some time. With the release of SAS 9.1, this can now be presented to a needy market in a consistent and integrated manner.”
“Butler Group believes that Data Quality can no longer be seen as optional – by embedding it as fundamental capability within its solutions, SAS should find strong resonance with a market desperate for reliable and actionable business insight.”
– March 2004
(Ian Charlesworth, Senior Research Analyst, Butler Group)
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With the latest major upgrade of the architecture that underpins its products, version 9, SAS has tied together all those software components with a common metadata layer, which provides information about the data that resides in various places. That has eliminated much of the redundancy among SAS' tools and improved consistency of the data, says Forrester Research analyst Keith Gile.
– Baseline, "SAS Institute: Beyond Nerds," Todd Spangler, June 8, 2004
(Keith Gile, Senior Analyst, Forrester)
The improved user interface should make it "more inviting for business and casual users to interact with the applications," said Keith Gile, an analyst at Forrester Research, in a recent report. That, in turn, could lead to greater sales among existing SAS users and new customers.
– Investors Business Daily, “SAS Institute Aims To Bring Its Analytics Software To The Masses," J. Bonasia, May 2, 2004
(Keith Gile, Senior Analyst, Forrester)
The SAS9 Intelligence Platform sets the stage for seven software solutions slated to ship later this year. Next quarter, the company will ship SAS Marketing Automation. Forrester analysts Elana Anderson and Eric Schmitt state in the report, "SAS Shakes Up Marketing Automation," that SAS has the potential to disrupt the marketing automation software market and seize a leadership position.
– Destination CRM, “SAS Moves Beyond Business Intelligence," David Myron, March 31, 2004
(Elana Anderson and Eric Schmitt, Senior Analysts, Forrester)
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"With the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform, SAS offers a deep and broad analytic solution including data quality and ETL tools, data management, and advanced business intelligence and analytics. As also addressed usability by introducing Web Report Studio – the improved Web-based reporting opens up SAS solutions to the large audience of non-technical business users."
– IDC, “Western European Business Intelligence Tools, 2004-2008 Forecast," March 2004
(Christina Steensboe, Research Program Manager, IDC)
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TDWI
In the past, SAS often was adopted by power users "who wanted access to data and often circumvented IT" to get at the information they needed, said Wayne Eckerson, an analyst at the Seattle-based Data Warehousing Institute. But SAS 9 looks to be a more IT-friendly offering because of new features like a common metadata repository and improved data quality tools, he said.
– ComputerWorld, “SAS releases data analysis upgrade in bid to broaden use," Craig Stedman, March 31, 2004
(Wayne Eckerson, Analyst, TDWI)
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