SAS rolls out solutions for analytics, customer experience, IoT

• SAS Analytics for the Internet of Things (IoT): proven software products that analyse data sent from IoT sensors and devices
• SAS Viya: open and cloud-ready visualisation architecture
• SAS Customer Intelligence 360: a digital marketing hub delivered through the cloud 

Analytics leader SAS has announced several new offerings at the SAS Global Forum that leverage on the latest trends in cloud, analytics and the IoT:

Analytics and visualisation

SAS Viya is a new visualisation architecture designed to minimise the time between early-stage analytical exploration and business value and brings analytics and data mining to any skill level, SAS said. "The vast majority of the new generation of mission-critical apps, most of which are data-intensive, are being developed and run in the cloud," said Amy Konary, Program Vice President for SaaS and Cloud Services at IDC. "Within the next three to five years, most large enterprises will have much more data in the cloud than in their own data centres. IDC believes that this ‘data gravity’ will hasten the migration of legacy systems and data to the cloud."

"SAS has embarked on a major effort to build for the future of analytics with its SAS Viya architecture,” said Nicole Engelbert, Director of Research and Analysis at Ovum. “This is an ambitious, aggressive undertaking that incorporates the key innovations that can take its customers where they want to be. It’s critical that analytics users can quickly integrate and exploit new technologies.”

Randy Guard, SAS Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, said, “Analytics are firmly at the centre of today’s enterprise, producing new opportunities, improving customer experiences and growing bottom lines. SAS Viya provides businesses, governments and other organisations a single, open and cloud-ready architecture. It’s easy to manage, scales to all analytic challenges, and delivers value from analysts of varied skill sets.” In 2016 SAS will introduce:

 SAS Visual Analytics – offers visual data discovery, interactive reporting and self-service data exploration. It is already deployed at thousands of sites around the globe and will be among the first products available on SAS Viya.
 SAS Visual Statistics – features a graphical user interface and a predictive modelling and programming interface. Users can interactively create and refine models for specific groups or segments and quickly reveal insights
 SAS Visual Investigator – a new product that supports search, query and visualisation of data, regardless of format, size and location, as well as investigations using geospatial, network, and temporal visualisations
 SAS Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning – build a model once and deploy anywhere. This module will address data sourcing, analytical data preparation, feature engineering, dimension reduction, exploratory analysis, modelling and learning, integrated model comparison and implementation of models into production processes

Open and cloud-ready, SAS Viya and its associated offerings will be extensible via popular programming languages and public APIs, initially Python, Lua and Java, as well as public REST APIs. SAS will also deliver new public APIs that can be called as a service.

In addition to a multivendor architecture for analytics, SAS Viya now delivers a multicloud architecture for analytics. A single code base ensures consistent, reusable assets that are transportable as infrastructure evolves.

"The open SAS Viya architecture makes analytics accessible to anyone, and we want to build upon that openness by creating a community for knowledge sharing,” said Guard. “Our users will be able to contribute code, procedures, visuals and services, and collaborate on ideas.”

“With its distributed, massively parallel in-memory processing, SAS Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning delivers answers quickly, allowing an enterprise to shift gears on the fly and respond to changing markets,” said Sascha Schubert, SAS Advanced Analytics Marketing Director.

Customer intelligence

SAS is making customer experiences more relevant and targeted by helping customers unite digital customer data with offline data such as in-store transactions with a new offering to its Customer Intelligence line, SAS Customer Intelligence 360.

"We built SAS Customer Intelligence 360 as an intuitive digital marketing hub that brings together all available data. It helps marketers meet customers’ needs in real-time,” said Wilson Raj, Global Director of SAS Customer Intelligence. “For example, with integrated data at their disposal, a marketer can immediately send a personalised offer to a customer’s smartphone when they’re near a brick-and-mortar location.”

Delivered through the cloud via software-as-a-service (SaaS), SAS Customer Intelligence 360 arms marketers through:

 Guided analytics. Automatic segmentation and self-learning algorithms deliver more context to each marketing interaction
 Data freedom. SAS helps marketers access their data when, where and how they need it
 Omnichannel, linking what customers are doing on digital properties with what they’re doing elsewhere, such as in the store or with the contact centre
 Performance insights – not only which activities are working, but what content performs best, which customer segments to focus on, and what is the best sequence for an individual customer’s experience

SAS Customer Intelligence 360 includes two initial core modules, with more to come. SAS 360 Discover provides reporting and insights based on web and mobile behavioural data, and SAS 360 Engage enables users to create, orchestrate, and optimise digital customer journeys.

Analytics for the IoT

SAS Analytics for IoT is a new package of proven software products that applies SAS’ core expertise of analysing massive amounts of data to IoT. SAS Analytics for IoT helps organisations interpret rapidly moving and accumulating data, and make decisions based on that data. The resulting gains – such as improved safety and reduced injuries or enhanced product quality – translate into healthier profits.

For example, Finnish global industrial crane manufacturer Konecranes uses SAS to influence decisions made with sensor data. “The use of analytics supports our vision of knowing how millions of lifting devices and machine tools perform in real time,” said Juha Pankakoski, Chief Digital Officer at Konecranes, a Finnish crane specialist with a large presence in Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

“We use this knowledge around the clock to make operations safer and more productive. With SAS, Konecranes analyses equipment and customer data plus usage and impact data. Combining big data with reliability analysis and simulations enhances our ability to make predictions. We’ve gone from being able to predict failures on a single piece of equipment with data history for five variables for a few minutes, to predicting maintenance needs and failures for our entire equipment fleet with hundreds of variables and a data history as far back as four years.”

“For 40 years, SAS has uncovered meaningful patterns in what appears to be data noise,” said Jason Mann, SAS Director of Product Management for Internet of Things. “We’ve done it by listening to our customers. Now they’re telling us they’re struggling to see value from IoT. By focusing our considerable capabilities toward this business challenge, we’re making it easier for customers like Konecranes to extract meaning out of that data flood.”

Other companies using SAS to analyse IoT sensor data include:

 Navistar. The US-based heavy truck, bus and military vehicle manufacturer, which has facilities in Asia Pacific, uses SAS to maximise its OnCommand Connection (OCC) system, which monitors vehicles in real time. OCC sensors continuously stream multidimensional data from customers’ vehicles, including engine and fault codes. This capability allows Navistar to engage with customers in ways that were impossible before.

 Western Digital. Production engineers at data-storage manufacturer Western Digital, which has locations in Asia Pacific and the UAE, use SAS to identify possible failures early in the production process, then make timely decisions to avoid quality issues.

SAS combines streaming technology, analytics and domain expertise to turn IoT data into insight:

 SAS’ intelligent filtering focuses enterprises on what’s relevant and helps avoid the costly temptation to store everything.
 Understand the signals within the data. Combining IoT data with other contextual data makes it easier to detect patterns
 Base real-time action on signals as they occur, from simple alerts to complex automated responses

"The IoT market is evolving globally,” said Dan Vessett, IDC Group Vice President for Analytics and Information Management. “To meet the needs of enterprises engaged in creating sensor data, it’s important to keep analytics front and centre. Without predictive analytics at the edge and in the enterprise network, it will be difficult for any organisation to realise the full potential represented by the IoT. That’s where SAS’ offering makes a lot of sense – whether the organisation involved is engaged in manufacturing, energy, retail or any other industry that’s putting sensing devices into play."

Interested?

SAS Viya and the initial offerings will be available in May for select early adopters, and will be generally available in Q316.

Visit the Internet of Things (IoT) microsite

SAS Global Forum is the world's largest analytics conference, with more than 30,000 business and IT users of SAS software participating onsite and online. SAS Forum Singapore 2016 will take place on May 12, 2016. 

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