SAS advances its AI-ready data management foundation for industry agents and automation, with governance built-in

Integrated analytics and AI-driven automation help enterprises prepare, govern and activate data for trusted AI at scale

As enterprises race to operationalise AI, many are finding progress constrained by fragmented data environments, manual data engineering and governance models not designed to scale with the demands of AI-driven decision-making.

SAS today announced a targeted refresh of SAS Data Management – a cloud-native portfolio built on the SAS® Viya® data and AI platform, designed to help organisations prepare, govern and activate data for analytics, automation and AI by bringing analytics closer to where data resides.

By embedding governance, lineage and performance directly into data workflows, SAS enables organisations to scale AI initiatives with confidence, without sacrificing trust or control. New and expanded capabilities include:

• AI-ready data management
• Governance by design
• Agentic AI and copilots
• Cloud-native analytics acceleration

This comes as organisations struggle to translate rapid advances in AI into real-world deployment, with weak data foundations leading to delayed projects, increased risk and initiatives that stall before reaching production.

Alyssa Farrell, Senior Director of Data and AI Strategy at SAS, said:

“A modern data platform is now a mission-critical requirement as organisations move toward agentic AI workflows with less human oversight. SAS is redefining data management for the AI era by helping organisations optimise and modernise data estates, reduce complexity and unlock AI value, with governance and trust engineered directly into the foundation.”

Unified data management, with trust built in

In recent global research from IDC and SAS, nearly half (49%) of organisations cited non-centralised or poorly optimised cloud data environments as the top barrier to AI progress, followed closely by insufficient data governance processes (44%). Industry analysts reinforce this gap as Gartner predicts that 60% of AI initiatives will fail due to a lack of AI-ready data.

Data Management in SAS Viya addresses these challenges by treating governance and auditability as core design principles rather than compliance afterthoughts. Instead of layering controls on top of disconnected tools, SAS embeds lineage, transparency and control directly into how data is accessed, prepared and activated for analytics and AI – creating a defensible foundation that organisations can trust.

Agents and copilots that modernise data at the foundation

As organisations adopt agents and copilots to automate decisions and workflows, the quality and governance of underlying data becomes even more critical.

Many AI assistants operate only after data has been prepared, creating gaps in trust, lineage and oversight. SAS takes a different approach by applying AI across the data lifecycle itself, where foundational decisions determine whether AI can be trusted at scale.

SAS provides agents and copilots that help organisations understand, prepare and use data within governed workflows, reducing manual effort while maintaining transparency and control.

SAS Viya Copilot for Data Discovery enables natural language exploration of governed data and analytics assets, helping users quickly determine what data is available, how it can be used and whether it can be trusted – reducing discovery cycles from days to seconds.

SAS Viya Copilot for Code Assistance brings AI-assisted development directly into SAS Studio, helping developers write, understand and refine SAS and Python code using natural language, without leaving the governed development environment. This accelerates iteration while maintaining human oversight.

SAS Data Maker addresses data access constraints by generating high-fidelity synthetic data that reflects the statistical, relational and temporal characteristics of real data while preserving privacy, auditability and regulatory readiness. This enables teams to develop, test and collaborate without exposing sensitive information.

Today's announcement was made at SAS Innovate, the company’s global data and AI conference, as SAS celebrates 50 years of innovation. This year's event is proudly supported by our partner sponsors, including Microsoft, Intel and AWS.

Learn more about SAS data management offerings here.

About SAS

SAS is a global leader in data and AI, helping organizations make confident decisions with AI they can trust. For decades, SAS has set the standard for delivering software that drives meaningful impact, incorporating deep industry expertise, transparency, and governance. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW®