SAS 9.3

AMO 5.1/9.3 – Some nice features comming

Apr
07

Stopped by the AMO stand at SAS Global Forum 2011 and had a quick look at the new features coming out.

Things that took my interest:

  • AMO 5.1 will work with SAS 9.2 & 9.3, wahoo that will make upgrades easier
    (although any new feature that requires 9.3 will be grayed out if you are accessing a 9.2 backend)
  • In excel you can make a excel cell the basis for a Stored Process prompt, so that means you can setup custom drop downs in the Excel sheet that drives what the STP brings back (i.e month, region etc).  Think about the flexibility that will allow in building excel frontends to SAS
  • AMO 4.3 supports Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 & 2010, AMO 5.1 will only support Microsoft Office 2007 & 2010.  The main reason is the major use of ribbons in AMO 5.1.
    (and before you complain Office 2003 is over 8 years old remember!)

Bring on Q3 – 2011!

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SAS 9.3 – Planned for release in Q3 2011

Apr
06

SAS Global Forum 2011 in Vegas seems to be all about SAS 9.3.

Interesting for me as a number of customers in New Zealand are still on SAS 9.1 and yet to upgrade to SAS 9.2.

The other thing that is interesting is that while SAS are talking about new SMC 9.3 capability (and in fact a new flash/flex based version of SMC) , new versions of DI studio, Forecast Studio, EG 5.1, AMO xx (havent been to that stand yet) and brand new (ground breaking they said) high performance computing capability, the thing I have missed is the rollout plans for SAS 9.3.

I remember with SAS 9.1 there was a lot of positioning around the Foundation release, then platform (BI, DI etc) and then solutions, this time there is no positioning, just SAS 9.3 is due Q3 2011.  (Seem to remember the same roll out for SAS 9.2 but that may just be jetlag catching up with me)

I’m undecided if this is a good thing ot not (the lack of positioning not SAS 9.3 released in Q3 2011)

I did manage to confirm that they are planning to release Foundation and Platform components (eBI, eDI, EM etc) in the same Q3 release so that is good.

Now I wonder if I will need to go on a new SAS Migration course this year then….

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SAS Forum 2011 – What will they announce?

Mar
26

Well apart from SAS 9.3 (ill post more on that later) I am guessing SAS will be publicly announcing their new BI capability due out at the end of this year.

There has been a rumor round for a while that SAS HO wasn’t happy with the latest Gartner BI Magic Quadrant.

So a decision was made to put some immediate focus on improving the BI reporting capability and to improve its market share and positioning.

Cindi Howson has posted on her blog some details making them public http://biscorecard.typepad.com/biscorecard/2011/03/sas-wants-to-be-the-best-in-bi-really.html

Some highlights from her post:

“Dr. Jim Goodnight, CEO and founder of SAS, says, “I want my BI to be better than anyone else’s.””

“Looking ahead, SAS plans to release a new version of its BI suite in fall 2011.”

“The company has reorganized over 300 developers to dramatically improve the user interface, a move that affects not only the BI suite, but also the presentation layer of its industry analytic applications (SAS Solutions).”

So im glad there is some focus on the BI layer to make sure SAS doesn’t lose its ability to compete against the Oracle, IBM and Microsoft “stack plays” or the up and coming BI vendors like QlikTech.

But I do wonder if it is wise to (and in fact whether they will) focus on look and feel and no doubt add a whole raft of new wizzy widgets and functions.

When SAS 9.1 was released I believe SAS got a jump on the BI market by being the first large vendor to release the first integrated BI Suite that used a single Metadata repository.  But with the 5 year gap between 9.1 and 9.2 they lost a lot of that lead.  They obviously feel they need to now play catchup, but in my experience with SAS and other BI tools they aren’t that different (yes there are always things other vendors do better).

So where would I put my money if it was me, well I would create a metadata access layer that allowed SAS to read the other BI vendors semantic layers (i.e Oracle BMM, BO Universes etc).  Open up those vendors semantic layer as a data source for SAS (and its BI layer) would be a game changer.

Of course im guessing they won’t so maybe that should be the next SaasInct project?

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