SAS

SAS 9.3 shipped a couple of months ago and it included an update of SAS Model Manager 3.1. Model Manager (reviewed here) is a product for managing the analytic model lifecycle once a model is built – validating, deploying, monitoring and retraining predictive analytic models. Model Manager is designed to help with some of the [...]

Decision Management Solutions, the company of which I am CEO, is running a study on Predictive Analytics in the Cloud. Both Predictive Analytics and Cloud are hot topics and the intersection has tremendous potential. Whether it is using cloud-based decision management systems powered by predictive analytics, using the cloud to deliver predictive analytics to SaaS [...]

Our Predictive Analytics in the Cloud research is moving forward. We announced this multi-stage, multi-client project a week ago and are busy developing the survey (plan is to launch this mid-September) and the initial position paper. I’ve had some great interviews with our sponsors (Clario Analytics, FICO, Opera Solutions, Predixion Software, SAS, Teradata, and Toovio) [...]

This is an update of an earlier post on Decision Technology Events for October 2011 There are a number of great events related to Decision Management themes and technology platforms this Fall.  Here’s my list so far: Computerworld BI & Analytics Perspectives 2011, 18-20 September, Phoenix, AZ @BIAPCW I am giving the opening keynote “From Business [...]

We announced are newest research today – Predictive Analytics in the Cloud. This is a multi-stage, multi-client project that will run over the next few months. We’ve had strong interest and have a great set of sponsors that should be familiar to readers from our First Looks – Clario Analytics, FICO, Opera Solutions, Predixion Software, [...]

I am giving a keynote on “Transforming your business with analytics” at at SAS Forum Netherlands 2011 on October 5, 2011. The power of analytics lies in its ability to transform decision-making. Focusing on decisions, especially on operational decisions, focuses advanced analytics to drive measurable business results. By delivering the right action at the right [...]

I got my first look at JMP recently. JMP originally stood for “John’s Macintosh Project” apparently but is now a major business unit of SAS that has operated independently since 1989. It has about 180 employees and 250,000 users worldwide. The product has long since supported both Windows and Mac platforms and is a full [...]

There are a number of great events related to Decision Management themes and technology platforms this October. Here’s my list so far for October 2011 Teradata Partners Conference and Expo 2-6 October, San Diego, CA This is a great conference for anyone using or considering Teradata. I assume that this year there will be a [...]

One of the hot topics these days in analytics is “in-database” or “in-warehouse” analytics. I have blogged about multiple products in this space including the work SAS has done with Teradata, Aster, DB2 , Netezza  and Greenplum, the work Revolution Analytics has done with Netezza, Angoss and FuzzyLogix (described in this report). With all this [...]

Here is a recap of product news for Q1 2011 Analytics First Look- Eagle Eye Analytics Advanced predictive modeling for the Property and Casualty insurance market First Look – SAS High Performance Computing Distributed grid environment providing parallel job execution across multiple servers with shared physical storage First Look – Opera Solutions Analytics service provider [...]

Jim Goodnight wrapped up the SAS Executive Global Forum. He began by talking about the changing hardware environment for analytics – the explosion of multi-core chips in particular – and how this has driven a massive re-design in SAS as they take all the SAS products and make them support multi-threaded, multi-core set ups. Two [...]

10 announcements at SAS Global Forum – some in the technology arena mostly around partnerships, some specific to solutions areas like customer intelligence, one industry specific one and several related to customers and their use of analytics. Ketih Collins, CTO of SAS, started talking about the high performance computing announcements with EMC Greenplum and Teradata. [...]

I have been doing more thinking about optimization recently and thought I should get caught up with the OR (Operations Research) folks at SAS to see what they are doing. They see OR technologies as part of the overall analytics spectrum and feel that anything that improves the rigor of decision making without unduly constraining [...]

Karl Rexer has just released the results from his annual survey of data miners – RexerAnalytics.com/Data-Miner-Survey-Results-2010.html. This year 735 data miners responded to an extended survey. Interesting facts from this year’s results: CRM and Marketing remain the top focus area with goals like retaining customers and understanding them better coming top also. Decision trees, regression [...]

Warning, long post follows – SAS has a lot of products and even this summary was a lot. A big session on the product portfolio – 2010 and 2011 highlights in some specific focus areas. New releases in 2010 included: Customer Link Analytics – released in Q1 this product focused on using links between customers [...]

Focus of the presentation from Russ Cobb was Banking, Insurance, Retail and Government. Banking first. Lots of releases this year primarily around Enterprise Risk Management, Governance Risk Compliance, Customer intelligence, fraud and financial crime solutions. Key customer issues for SAS in banking: Customer Growth How do you identify, grow and manage your most profitable customers. [...]

Carl Farrell came up to talk about sales enablement and execution. 2010 was an interesting year in the Americas as the recovery was very inconsistent between countries in the Americas and across verticals. Strong growth in First Year Fees – 21% in US, 15% in Canada and 56% nearly in Latin America (with the Southern [...]

I am attending the SAS analyst day this week – SAS Inside Intelligence. Jim Goodnight kicked off the SAS analyst event. Numbers look good for a tough economy – 5.2% worldwide growth in US Dollars or 6.7% without currency fluctuation. Latin America, Canada and Asia Pacific were all very strong but regions were good across [...]

I caught up with SAS recently to discuss their high-performance computing products. SAS’ high performance computing products are designed to address some known customer challenges such as underutilized computing resources, rapidly growing data volume and complexity, unnecessary data movement, and slow time to results because underlying hardware infrastructure is maxed out. Add in a general [...]