SAS recognizes partner innovation and celebrates program growth

Accenture named Global Partner of the Year; Maxtera Technologies named Channel Partner of the Year

At an awards ceremony held during SAS^® Global Forum, SAS recognized the innovation and value that our partners are driving every day for customers. 

As customer demand for analytics solutions grows and delivery models evolve, a robust partner community is critical. SAS’ strong Partner Program of consulting firms, resellers, OEMs and managed analytic services providers continues to help customers implement SAS technology and solve their most complex business problems.

The following partners were honored:

Global Partner of the Year – Accenture

Recognized for continued commitment to the SAS alliance and delivering innovation to customers, Accenture increased its number of SAS-certified professionals by 129 percent over 2016. Accenture is the only SAS Platinum Partner to hold an Analytics competency badge, underscoring the firm’s significant customer capabilities.  Additionally, Accenture Analytics, part of Accenture Digital, is currently creating a new global center of excellence for SAS technologies in India, and creating regional hubs of SAS knowledge to give customers convenient access to support.

Channel Partner of the Year – Maxtera Technologies

Brazilian business intelligence and data warehouse solutions provider Maxtera Technologies was recognized for its commitment to customer satisfaction and ability to deliver innovative solutions to customers in new industries. In particular, Maxtera’s innovation in delivering data quality improvement has led to a number of new projects with regulatory institutions.

Excellence in Innovation – Datagear

Based in Egypt, SAS silver partner Datagear created a “Know Your Customer System” that included enhanced due diligence to manage the onboarding of all customers in six large banks across the region. The system enables name standardization algorithms specific to local languages – most notably creating consistency between Arabic and English. This innovative system simplifies this complex problem, reducing false-positive name matches previously associated with the vastly different ways these two languages are written.

Additionally, SAS honored the following organizations as Regional Partners of the Year:

• Asia Pacific: ITOCHU Techno-Solutions
• Canada/Latin America: Financial Risk Group
• Central/Eastern Europe: Nunatec
• DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland): Cintellic
• MEA (Middle East, Africa): Linktera
• Nordics: KnowIT
• SWE: Sopra Steria
• United Kingdom/Ireland: Sopra Steria
• United States: d-Wise

“There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity in the analytics space,” said SAS Vice President of Alliances Russ Cobb. “SAS is developing new technologies and exploring ways to help our customers grow their businesses. Our partner community plays a critical part in that. Together, we give our customers an end-to-end solution from implementing the technology to business process change.”

This Awards Program is part of our continued efforts to drive partners’ return on investment in SAS. In fact, many partners capitalized on the new training and credentials program to deepen their SAS skills, resulting in a 68 percent increase in partners earning SAS credentials last year.

Today's announcement was made at SAS Global Forum, the world's largest analytics conference, with more than 30,000 business and IT users of SAS software participating on-site and online.