SAS first to automate enterprise grid computing capabilities
Industry’s only vendor to grid-enable multiple applications, including data mining
CARY, N.C. le 15 décembre 2005
SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today announced powerful new grid computing capabilities to its SAS®9 enterprise intelligence software, making it the industry’s first and only solution capable of automatically grid-enabling multiple applications on a single platform. This new automated grid management capability gives grid computing users greater flexibility, scalability and reliability for managing applications across an enterprise. The SAS automated management feature allows grid customers to more easily and cost-effectively allocate compute-intensive SAS applications throughout an organization, significantly reducing data processing time and enabling more data to be integrated and analyzed in less time.
“This is an industry first,” said Keith Collins, chief technology officer at SAS. “No other vendor can offer the level of grid automation we can for data integration and data mining projects, and there are more grid-enabled applications to come. With grid implementations on the rise, we continue to work with technology leaders like IBM and Platform Computing to make it easier and more efficient for customers to run SAS applications on their grid computing systems.”
Ever-increasing data volumes and shrinking processing windows are a common challenge for many businesses, particularly with compute-intensive applications such as data integration and data mining. These applications are critical if a business is to make timely and accurate management decisions. For this reason, SAS expanded its partnership with Platform Computing, the largest distributed and grid computing software vendor, to integrate grid management functions into SAS’ data integration and data mining products, thus improving the scheduling and job flow of these time-consuming projects. SAS is also a charter member in the recently announced IBM Grid and Grow™ program, thereby ensuring its grid capabilities are optimized to run on industry-leading IBM eServer BladeCenter technology.
“With a few mouse clicks – we now can decide whether we want to run processes synchronous, on SMP machines or distribute them onto a grid, making best use of our existing hardware and shorten setup, development and maintenance time,” said Gunther Schuck, data warehouse services manager at HVB Systems GmbH.
Financial, life sciences and manufacturing industries, as well as the government sector, are considered “early adopters” of grid computing, with more expected to follow. A SAS grid environment opens up new data processing opportunities for businesses that, historically, were limited by the number of hours in a day. For example, a bank needs to accelerate the scoring process of a growing number of client records to shorten the turnaround time for credit approvals, or perhaps a pharmaceutical company wants to add additional statistical analysis procedures to improve the accuracy of market data analysis. By speeding up the data integration process via grid computing, data can be delivered that much faster to core internal groups so they can analyze the data that will fuel important management decisions for such areas as customers, inventory or supplier relationships. This is particularly important for compliance reporting and RFID. The ability to distribute the data analysis function throughout a grid gives organizations the freedom to process even more data for greater in-depth analysis so they can anticipate and plan for the future with greater precision.
“Platform Computing and SAS have had a great relationship for more than five years, helping SAS customers get maximum value out of their technology investments through workload management and automation,” said Songnian Zhou, CEO of Platform Computing. “With this announcement, SAS is taking grid-based technology to the next level by extending into full scale-out capabilities onto clusters or grids. By combining the power of Platform Enterprise Grid Orchestrator with the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, we are delivering a new class of open, scalable grid solutions that enables enterprises to reach the full potential of on-demand computing environments.”
“SAS was the first major solution provider to join the IBM Grid and Grow™ program we announced this summer. We are delighted to partner with SAS to deliver the first automated grid-enabled business analytics application for Grid and Grow,” said Ken King, vice president of Grid computing, IBM Systems and Technology Group. “The combination of SAS’ new grid management capabilities, Platform Computing’s scheduling software, and IBM’s industry-leading blade server platform represents a compelling value proposition and competitive advantage for our mutual clients deploying grid computing solutions.”
The SAS®9 Enterprise Intelligence Platform is an integrated, open and extensible foundation for creating and delivering accurate, in-depth intelligence. From data integration and storage capabilities to business intelligence and analytic intelligence tools, the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform helps decrease existing intelligence gaps and provides a solid business analytics architecture that supports business processes at any level of an organization.
The IBM Grid and Grow™ offering is a simple, but powerful solution designed to help companies in key industries, including industrial, public sector and financial, get started with grid computing. It is built using the industry leading IBM eServer BladeCenter platform, featuring Intel-based blades running Linux and other operating systems.
About SAS
SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at 40,000 sites – including 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 500® – to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers ; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions ; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know® .
