The SAS^® Enterprise Intelligence Platform

IT infrastructures are complex. Integrating data and applications is a constant challenge, and so is providing the accurate intelligence demanded in today's fast-paced competitive environment.

SAS®9 provides an integrated platform for delivering enterprise intelligence. This platform, which we call the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, optimally integrates individual technology components within your existing IT infrastructure into a single, unified system. The result is an information flow that transcends organizational silos, diverse computing platforms and niche tools – and delivers new insights that drive value for your organization.

The SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform extends the value of your existing systems while setting the stage for new levels of enterprise intelligence not previously possible. It includes the following components:

SAS Data Integration provides prebuilt, high-performance capabilities for data connectivity, data quality, ETL (extract, transform and load), data migration, data synchronization and data federation. SAS Intelligence Storage is a dedicated solution that efficiently stores and disseminates information for business intelligence and analytic requirements, offering relational and OLAP storage options from the same foundational inputs. SAS Analytics provides an integrated environment for predictive and descriptive modeling, forecasting, optimization, simulation, experimental design and more. SAS Analytics leverage existing data and infrastructures to support effective decision making and integration into business intelligence environments. SAS Business Intelligence delivers a set of BI capabilities that enable different types of users to surface meaningful intelligence from consistent, companywide data.

As part of an integrated platform, all components and services are managed from a single point, reducing the administrative effort for maintenance of applications, users and security. Data consistency is assured because metadata is stored in a single metadata repository and is shared across all SAS technologies and solutions.

Using the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform as a foundation, SAS®9 offers targeted business solutions that support enterprise intelligence, customer intelligence, financial intelligence, supply chain intelligence and more – as well as turnkey solutions for various vertical markets, such as financial services, life sciences, health care, retail, manufacturing and others.

SAS also provides a strategic, proven approach that can help organizations realize many of their Information Management objectives by helping them gain incrementally more value from their information assets – giving them the edge to be more efficient, differentiate themselves from the competition, mitigate risk and comply with governmental regulations.

SAS is also pursuing a strategic initiative to enable key aspects of SAS Data Integration, SAS Business Intelligence, SAS Analytics and SAS Solutions to execute within relational database engines. SAS® In-Database Processing offers our customers innovative solutions, which deliver better answers faster, and a cost-effective approach to further leverage their data warehousing investments. By pushing relevant SAS capabilities to where data resides, organizations can develop and deploy analytic models quickly and flexibly to improve accuracy and deliver information in a timely manner.

No matter where your organization is on the path toward evolving information capabilities, SAS can adapt to your situation and drive intelligence evolution to the next level, while leveraging and extending the value of your existing IT investments.

Key Characteristics of the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform: Consistent – offers the ability to integrate, share and centrally manage metadata across entire enterprises, creating one version of the truth and eliminating information silos and the costs of maintaining them. Open – integrates with a wide variety of data and metadata sources to support information flow across diverse and disjointed IT environments. Unified – shares common security and administration services, data storage and management functions, query and reporting tools, analytic toolsets, publishing infrastructure, and Web-based user interfaces across components and applications. Manageable – provides a single point of administration for all elements of the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform. Standards-based – supports industry-standard protocols, programming languages, models and communication interfaces. Extensible – enables customers to build custom solutions using standard development environments (such as Java) and well-documented application programming interfaces (APIs). Portable – allows applications to be moved between systems and platforms based on changing needs for growth and maintenance. Scalable – enterprise-class grid computing capabilities utilize all computing resources in the most efficient manner. Compatible – fits into an organization's IT practices, skills, methodologies and infrastructure in a way that leverages customers' existing technology investments. Future-ready – scalable to handle future growth; customizable to support unique new applications; open and standards-based to support future technologies not yet defined.