When I was in vegas for the SAS Global Forum earlier this year, I have to admit I came away confused on where SAS was going over the next few years.

The kick off session had a few good insights into some new feature functions and the theme of Big Data and Social Media came through strongly.

But how SAS 9.3, 9.4, 10.x was going to play out over the next few years, how SAS was going to compete with the IBM Juggernaut that is steamrolling with SPSS and its Analytics Consulting into a longtime SAS only space, what the true plan for Mobile capability is,  what the plan for being “in the cloud” is, all was far from clear.

All these things were very vague.  And it got worse when I asked individual’s from SAS through-out the week.

Now this isn’t unusual from my point of view, as SAS has always been a little different to most vendors in that it seems to prefer to deliver products, rather than marketing hype.  Having said that some understanding of the planned direction is always good, at least to understand there is a plan.

I have been following the tweets and blogs of James Taylor for a little while and in March 2011 he blogged a series that outlined his understanding of the SAS product portfolio and roadmaps based on attending the SAS Inside Intelligence 2011 – Executive Viewpoint analysts sessions.

His blog posts are here and highly recommended if you want a view on where SAS is going.

1. SAS Inside Intelligence 2011 – Executive Viewpoioint
2. SAS Sales and Marketing Overview
3. SAS Vertical Strategy
4. SAS product portfolio and roadmaps