SAS® access to Hadoop links leading analytics, big data

New integration option is keystone of SAS information management, enterprise analytics strategies

CARY, NC  (Mar. 06, 2012)  – SAS increases access to critical data sources with Hadoop support in its updated SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server. Exploiting the popular open source data architecture helps customers using analytics from SAS, the leader in business analytics , increase the value of big data assets.

Hadoop joins more than three dozen supported data sources in SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server, including Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Teradata including Teradata Aster, Sybase, Netezza, EMC Greenplum and MySQL. SAS support for Hadoop access is a key requirement for many organizations who are adding Hadoop to their environment. These enterprises include Macys.com, the online operation of the iconic retailer. 

"Hadoop is facilitating big data analytics at Macys.com as our data assets continue to grow exponentially. SAS Hadoop support will let us fully leverage our analytics talent, our data and our long-term investment in SAS," said Kerem Tomak, Vice President of Marketing Analytics at Macys.com. "SAS with Hadoop is critical to our big data plan." 

Sponsored by the Apache Software Foundation, Hadoop is an open source Java-based framework for processing large data sets in a distributed computing environment. SAS integrates with the Apache Hadoop distribution. 

SAS' deep integration with Hadoop applies the parallelism of MapReduce, the distributed computing framework commonly associated with Hadoop. SAS, Hadoop and data warehouse infrastructure Hive match perfectly in analyzing large data sets, simplifying the most common big data analysis and analytic use cases. 

"Hadoop is becoming more important as more organizations evaluate its capabilities and plan for increased deployment," said Jim Davis, SAS Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. "Bringing powerful SAS Analytics to Hadoop takes advantage of its distributed processing capabilities and helps effectively manage Hadoop deployments. 

"Hadoop lacks good tools to develop and manage complex deployments. SAS' extensive data and analytics management software helps enterprises pull value from Hadoop deployments using minimal resources," said Davis. 

"Hadoop's value is in taking very large data collections – from simple, regular data to complex, unstructured data – and process it quickly," said Carl Olofson, IDC Research Vice President for Application Development and Deployment. "IDC expects commercial use of Hadoop to accelerate as more established enterprise software providers such as SAS make Hadoop accessible and easy to use." 

Numerous features within enhanced SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server support Hadoop and big data, including: 

• SAS "write once, run anywhere" extends to Hadoop deployments.
• SAS features such as job flow builder, visual editor, syntax checker and others are extended to Hive, Pig, MapReduce and HDFS commands.
• SAS augments native Hadoop security with SAS data security provisions, including authorization and data lineage.
• SAS supports popular Hadoop distributions such as Cloudera, HortonWorks and EMC Greenplum.
• SAS data quality and profiling cover data moving in or out of Hadoop.
• SAS access extends SAS capabilities such as visual analytics explorer, text mining and analytics to Hadoop data.
• Hadoop data can be federated along with data from other sources, including the ability to embed the federated query in a data management job flow.

Information Management

With data increasingly the basis for decisions, traditional data management falls short. The growing volume, velocity and variety of data compel enterprises to use data to provide the fourth and most important "v" – value. 

And as businesses look for more value from their information assets, IT must deliver a unified infrastructure providing optimal performance and scalability. That means a service-based approach that supports a range of operational and analytical uses. It must blend cloud and on-premise offerings, delivering fast time to value with minimal infrastructure and people costs. 

"SAS Information Management enables customers to exploit and govern information assets, resulting in competitive differentiation and sustained business success," said Mark Troester, SAS IT/CIO Strategist. "SAS Information Management uniquely integrates management of data, analytics and decision processes across the entire information continuum." 

SAS Information Management delivers: 

• Data management, including data governance, data integration, data quality and master data management.
• Analytics management, including model management, deployment monitoring and analytics information asset governance.
• Decision management, including decision services such as business services and workflow, to fully integrate IT into business systems. 

Road map for success

SAS Information Management will deliver greater support for big data, data governance, master data management and decision management this year. Advanced analytic enablement will grow as analytic processing increasingly moves into databases. 

Enterprise readiness will improve as SAS customers gain increased scalability, performance and usability. Today's announcement is part of the SAS strategy for supporting customers with big data requirements. Future announcements will provide additional support for decision-making based on big data assets.

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