SAS: Architects, Integration Pros Are ‘Crucial’ To Next Wave of BI, Analytics 
SAS, one of the leaders in BI and analytics, says a new chapter in analytics adoption to spur business value of enterprise software and data systems will present unique opportunities for IT architects and application owners. IDN speaks with SAS senior vice president Jim Davis.
SAS, one of the leaders in BI and analytics, says a new chapter in analytics adoption to spur business value of enterprise software and data systems will present unique opportunities for IT architects and application owners. IDN speaks with SAS senior vice president Jim Davis.
“Over more than three decades, SAS achieved huge success selling its BI / analytics solutions to CFOs and line of business managers, not really to IT,” Davis told IDN. But, over the last few years, Davis said IT architects are becoming more “crucial” to the success of BI projects, and in turn to SAS.
“The nature of success with BI solutions has changed, driven largely by exploding growth of data and expansion of SOA to architectures, data and applications,” Davis said. “So today, SAS is reaching out to IT architects with specially-designed solutions that will help them quickly deliver BI solutions that will easily integrate with their existing architectures, data and business processes.”
He quickly adds, that IT architects and integration professionals also need to learn more about their company’s business objectives so they can best match their skills to how business users can benefit from their expertise. “As we work with architects, we tell them to remember they are not just moving data,” Davis added. . “They are involved in many aspects of data management for business outcomes.”
Davis shares these top reasons IT architects and integration professionals have a promising future in BI / analytics:
As we work with architects, we tell them they are not just moving data. They are involved in business outcomes.
Jim Davis
Senior Vice President
SAS
- SAS focused historically on query and reporting to give business end users autonomy of IT. “The days where business users can get access to all the BI they want and need from within one database or even one department are quickly disappearing,” Davis said.
- Today, companies want a convergence of query, reporting, mobility, predictive analytics and even collaboration to drive high value-add BI and analytics projects, Davis said. Companies are creating and retaining exponential amounts of data, compared to just a few years ago.
- As enterprise data volumes seriously increase, “SAS is also looking at serious data integration to manage efforts to apply analytics in a powerful way to not just look at what has happened, but to predict what will be happening,” Davis added.
- Finally, enterprises want business intelligence / analytics to affirm their business process management and business rules, and update those processes / rules when conditions warrant. “Getting all those pieces to fit together is today’s new challenge, and getting the most value from that data now will require the architect to get involved,” Davis said.
The result: “In 2010, almost 50% of our revenues was from analytics integration, so BI success is now based on acknowledging the integration and infrastructure tasks needed to make BI and analytics more valuable to the business,”
SAS Technologies To Empower
IT Architects, Integration Pros for BI / Analytics
SAS is now offering tools to reduce latency around decision making, as well as to infuse modeling into existing infrastructure and even transactions. “The goal is to get closer to a real-time decision-making process driven by more accessible analytics,” Davis said.
SAS’s technologies now range from basic data transformation and SOA integration to MDM (master data management), data federation, repository management, SOA, event processing and semantics, which are all helping business users employ BI and analytics to get more control and more visibility.
“The CIOs and architects will definitely play a crucial role in helping companies gain more use from their data,” Davis said. “Just as an example, IT architects can help users detect unforeseen patterns in data by providing models with lots and lots of attributes, or use extensive workbenches to organize data” for OLAP, mini-cubes or multi-dimensional tasks.
SAS is also expanding partnership with Accenture, Capgemini and Deloitte to bring domain expertise and technology such as data mining, data integration for distributed analytics and real-time solutions.
Business Drivers for Today’s IT Architect Opportunities in BI/Analytics
Davis said despite the recent economic downturn, the tough times actually drove a spike in BI / analytics adoption.
In fact, SAS reported a record $2.4 billion in revenues earlier this year, and noted that analytics accounted for double-digit growth in nearly all industry solutions, including education, energy and utilities, financial services, government, health care and life sciences.
“We’re definitely seeing that the CFOs and CEOs we speak to are asking more from their data,” Davis said. “And there is definitely a need for more serious data integration and end-to-end visibility that the data and integration architects can provide.”
Davis cited three key reasons, driven by these CEO/CFO objectives:
- Optimization – Using analytics makes a difference on the bottom line, (more profitability, improved processes, customer satisfaction and retention, etc.)
- Leveraging Data – Companies that have accumulated vast amounts of data are now looking for ways to treat that data as valuable research assets.
- Governance, Risk and Compliance – Firms subject to changing regulations, such as financial services and pharmaceuticals, are looking to manage credit risk, legal risk, etc.
Some experts suggest that SAS’s broader vision for analytics may be good for IT architects, but it might also attract unwanted competition from the likes of the major enterprise vendors, such as Oracle, IBM, SAP, Microsoft and others.
Davis told IDN SAS has partnerships with many of these firms, but is well-positioned to compete with them in BI / analytics, if necessary. “All those vendors, like IBM, Oracle and even HP, are in a battle for the complete stack. They want to provide customers everything – hardware, middleware, database and some BI or analytics features,” Davis said.
“SAS doesn’t want to own the stack. We can’t and won’t play there. We will continue to focus on value add for business intelligence and business analytics,” he added.
