SAS announced that the SAS Viya analytics platform is now available at Microsoft Azure Marketplace with the click of a button on a pay-as-you-go basis. Full-featured SAS Viya on Microsoft Azure equips customers worldwide with access to essential data exploration, machine learning and model deployment analytics. It’s available in many translated languages and includes an extensive in-app learning center to support immediate onboarding and long-term success.
Market research from IDC forecasts that analytics software deployment on public clouds is growing and will match on-premises deployments by 2024. “In this strategic move, SAS makes access to its analytics easier,” said Dan Vesset, Group Vice President, Analytics and Information Management at IDC. “SAS Viya is one of the most comprehensive analytics platforms on the market today. Presenting users with the complete analytics life cycle – from data to a deployed and managed model – available for immediate use and deployment via the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, is key. And offering it with built-in support and training is expected to bring significant productivity benefits to analytics, IT and business groups around the world.”
SAS Viya is designed to broaden analytics access across an organization, with machine learning capabilities that allow all users to increase productivity and collaborate seamlessly. With the availability of SAS Viya on Microsoft Azure, users will have access to the full Viya package that includes SAS Visual Analytics, SAS Visual Statistics, SAS Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning, and SAS Model Manager.
The platform offers both programming and low- or no-code options in a single visual interface to enable users of all skill levels to take advantage of best-in-class AI. With support for both SAS and open source languages including Python and R, data scientists can write code using their languages and techniques of choice.
SAS CEO Jim Goodnight said accessing Viya in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace is a fast and easy way to tap into the power of SAS. “We’re excited to offer customers a new way to gain access to SAS Viya while continuing to provide all the powerful capabilities our users already know and love,” Goodnight said. “We’ve spent decades building the most comprehensive suite of analytics on the market, with next-generation AI that addresses the complete analytics life cycle. We design and test our software to be the fastest and most productive. And now we’re making it all available with a few clicks in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.”
Referring to its commitment to customer success Bryan Harris, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at SAS said “Our commitment to cloud and AI innovation is critical to our customers’ success – whether they are building simple reports or developing advanced AI solutions to answer critical business questions. Making SAS Viya available to entire analytics organizations is our goal, regardless of skill level, team or preferred programming language. We want Viya to be the foundation of our customers’ innovation stories.”
According to SAS, the benefits of this partnership to organizations globally are clear. For the National Bank of Greece (NBG), the flexibility of the SAS platform combined with Microsoft Azure’s cloud elasticity has helped transform bank operations. “With the SAS Viya implementation in the cloud, we have significantly improved development of new analytics infrastructure by notably decreasing the costs and the complexity of processes, and by acquiring agility, speed and efficiency,” said Pantelis Maraveas, Assistant General Manager of Retail Segments, Bank Analytics and Liability Products at NBG.
