New SAS® Visual Analytics helps organizations analyze, visualize big
data
Super-fast, in-memory solution offers high performance, deep insights
Mumbai, March 23, 2012: A new in-memory business intelligence (BI) solution from SAS uses a highly visual
interface to bring powerful analytics to a broader class of users than ever before.SAS Visual Analytics, the
newest product in the SAS High-Performance Analytics family from the leader in business analytics, provides a
fast, simple and cost-effective path to business insight and better decisions.
With SAS Visual Analytics, organizations can:

Apply the power of SAS Analytics to massive amounts of data.

Visually explore data at the speed of sight.

Share fresh insights with everyone, everywhere, via the Web or iPad®.
SAS Visual Analytics combines the industry's leading analytics, unique in-memory architecture, intuitive data
exploration, Hadoop support and information-delivery options, including the iPad. It is the only inmemory engine designed specifically for business visualization of big data on inexpensive, non proprietary
hardware. "The speed of in-memory architecture offers tremendous benefit. Organizations can explore huge
data volumes and get answers to critical questions in near-real time," said Dan Vesset, Program Vice President
of IDC's business analytics research. "SAS Visual Analytics offers a double bonus: the speed of in-memory
analytics plus self-service eliminates the traditional wait for IT-generated reports. Businesses today must base
decisions on insight gleaned from data, and that process needs to be close to instantaneous."
BEYOND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE:
"SAS Visual Analytics helps business users to visually explore data on their own," said SAS CEO Jim
Goodnight. "But it goes well beyond traditional query and reporting. Running on low-cost, industry-standard
blade servers, its high-performance in-memory architecture delivers answers in seconds or minutes instead of
hours or days. "The core of SAS Visual Analytics – our innovative SAS® LASR™ Analytic Server – speeds data
exploration and visualization. This in-memory analytic engine will extend across our software product portfolio,
seamlessly applying 35 years of SAS analytics innovation to big data assets," said Goodnight. "Add its publishto-mobile capability and graphic visualization, and there’s nothing that compares to SAS Visual Analytics."
Enterprises that have seen early demonstrations of SAS Visual Analytics clearly see the business value of
visual data exploration with incredibly fast results.
"I could immediately recognize in SAS Visual Analytics the potential benefit of incorporating the massive
amount of information in our call detail records into our models, but also the value of scoring and targeting our
customer base in real time with the most relevant offers," said Antoine Georges, Vice President of Analytics at
Virgin Mobile USA, a Sprint prepaid company. "SAS Visual Analytics will let us quickly dig into our big data to
uncover opportunities, and in time, to fully exploit them."
BIG DATA WITHOUT LIMITS:
A core component of SAS Visual Analytics, the SAS LASR Analytic Server, uses Hadoop (embedded Hadoop
Distributed File System) as local storage at the server for fault tolerance. SAS LASR Analytic Server has been
tested on billions of rows of data and is extremely scalable, bypassing the known column limitations of many
relational database management systems (RDBMS). The more data used in an analysis, the more accurate the
results. This is especially attractive when accuracy is critical in problem solving across big data environments,
including both structured and unstructured data.
SAS Visual Analytics can solve many business problems. For example, a marketing campaign manager at a
retailer with hundreds of stores and a thriving online sales channel needs faster, more sophisticated next-bestoffer recommendations for customers. SAS Visual Analytics allows analysts to look at all data from online
sales, stores, external demographic information and social media. Entire populations can be analyzed to
determine the best offer or interaction rather than using a sample, moving quickly and directly to robust, precise
recommendations. This information can then be distributed easily. Banks and capital markets firms can also
use the power of SAS Visual Analytics to help retail branch staff, commercial bankers and financial advisors cut
through the clutter of big data to improve customer interactions and financial advice in a timely way.
SAS Visual Analytics includes:
 SAS LASR Analytic Server - clients communicate with SAS LASR Analytic Server for calculations on
the data resident in-memory, producing remarkably fast results.
 The Hub - a central location to launch the various elements of SAS Visual Analytics.
 Mobile - a tool for viewing reports, connecting to servers and downloading information on the go.
 Explorer - an ad hoc data discovery and visualization tool to explore and analyze data.
 Designer - used to create standard and custom reports and dashboards.
 Environment Administration - used by administrators to manage users, security and data.
Server components run on Red Hat or SUSE Linux, and the mobile client is available for the iPad from the
iTunes® App Store. Other mobile devices will be supported in the future.
While the high end is not limited, SAS LASR Analytic Server reference configurations begin with an eight-blade
server with 96 processor cores, 768 gigabytes memory and 4.8 terabytes (TB) of disk storage. The upper end
of the reference configurations is 96 blades with 1,152 cores, 9.2 TB memory and 57.6 TB of disk storage,
enough disk space to store the entire Library of Congress six times. For more information on SAS Visual
Analytics, including screen shots, industry analyst comments, video and other resources please go to
the online press kit.
ABOUT SAS:
SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the
business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 55,000 sites
improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving
customers around the world The Power to Know®.
ABOUT SAS INDIA:
SAS has been in India since 1997 and has two wholly owned subsidiaries in the country: SAS Institute (India)
Pvt. Ltd. and SAS Research & Development having a team of over 500 technology and domain experts. SAS
India operations are headquartered in Mumbai with regional offices in Bangalore, New Delhi and Pune. SAS
works with organizations across Industries and offers them Analytics & Business Intelligence to fuel innovation
and meet their business objectives. Year on year SAS has been leading the Advanced Analytics market in
India with majority market share. It has also been awarded as one of the best places to work for by the Great
Places to Work institute. Information on SAS India operations can be found atwww.sas.com/India
For further information please contact:
Ketchum Sampark Pvt. Ltd.:
Bakul Gala
bakul.gala@ketchumsampark.com
Vikas Sahni
vikas.sahni@ketchumsampark.com
Arpit Shah
arpit.shah@ketchumsampark.com