SAS is one of those veterans of the software world who you would expect to be suffering from the move to the cloud and more modern software architecture but that’s far from the case. Revenue for this privately held company was up a respectable 5.4% to $2.87bn in FY12 (see ESAS Supplier Landscape 2013/14 for its UK stats) and given that it is in the high growth analytics area I would expect the current year (which is nearing its end) to be yet another growth period.
A recent catch-up with the company does nothing to change that view. The latest iteration of its foundation platform adds a host of new features, from support for high performance analytics procedures and access to more federated data sources (which are in line with the trends around big data) to more industralisation and cloud support. It has always sold annual licences so the subscription model is not a major shift for SAS. What is noticeable is that it is ramping up its cloud capabilities in smart ways.
The foundation product is already able to run on private cloud infrastructure and AWS and is being further developed to support NIST standards. SAS is also moving into the world of cloud-based applets - vApps - that extend its addressable market. Early vApps include Visual Analytics which is part of the fast developing and high growth data discovery and visualisation market being led by the likes of QlikTech with QlikView, Tibco Spotfire and Tableau (ESAS subscribers will be able to read our analysis of this sector soon). The company is also planning to launch an app store in 2014 off the back of its App Central cloud administration platform. Enterprise app stores are another big growth area where the prime challenge is monitising the model so progress here will be insightful.
These developments show that 30+ year old SAS remains very much on top of its game and with data and analytics of all types set to be a theme for 2014, it is positioned for a busy year – it is also active in bringing on new big data experts via its SAS Student Academy programme and has 16 academies running within UK universities.