Analyst report names SAS as sole Leader for enterprise insight platform suites

SAS® software ‘leads the pack’ of evaluated vendors

As technology continues to change, organizations struggle with a multitude of software options. In The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Insight Platform Suites, Q4 2016, Forrester Research says that “insight platforms that combine data management, analytics and insight execution tools were 2016's top emerging technology priority according to enterprise architects.”                                           

According to the report, enterprise architects need "a simplified way to develop and deploy data analytics applications that meet your firm’s thirst for insights at the moment of the most important customer and employee decisions. In other words, your business needs technology that lets it easily build and evolve systems of insight.”

SAS is identified as the only Leader in the report, based on its scores in the strategy, current offering and market presence categories.¹ The other six providers were considered Contenders or Strong Performers.

The report said SAS “leads the pack” and is among evaluated vendors able to differentiate itself with a clear vision of offering an insight platform supporting implementation of insight at the point of decision.

“Enterprise architecture pros are looking for platforms they can trust,” said the report. “The enterprise insight platform suites segment is growing because customers have struggled with open source and a bevy of startups, and they need a platform they can trust with their most demanding enterprise applications.

“SAS offers a balance between strength of current offering and a platform strategy. SAS has best-in-class analytics coupled with a breadth of good data management for streaming, virtualization and master data management. It has made progress simplifying its tools, and its recently launched SAS Viya offers promises to go even further in modifying and simplifying its architecture.”

Among the 18 integrated SAS^® products included in the Forrester evaluation were:

• Analytics – SAS Visual Analytics, SAS Model Manager, SAS Office Analytics and SAS^® Enterprise Miner™.
• Data Management – SAS Data Loader for Hadoop, SAS Data Management Server, SAS Data Quality Accelerator.
• Insight Execution – SAS Event Stream Processing, SAS Decision Manager, SAS Customer Intelligence 360.
• Big Data Foundation – SAS Grid Manager, SAS Data Loader for Hadoop, SAS Event Stream Processing.                                                                                                               

“The SAS customer community, always willing to share their opinions with us, is a great source for direction on technology trends,” said Mike Frost, SAS technology director. “Our customers have always guided our innovation and continue to be our inspiration.”

Please read SAS in the Open Ecosystem to understand how an open analytics platform extends open source technologies with governance and scalability.

¹ Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Insight Platform Suites, Q4 2016, Forrester Research Inc., Dec. 7, 2016