The SAS Social Media Analytics product launch was a huge hit with the press at SAS Global Forum. I wrote about it below, a lot of analysts and social media pros are blogging about it too, and it seemed for at least a few hours last Monday that everyone on Twitter was talking about it.
From some angles, it may look as though social media analytics was the only news to come out of SAS Global Forum. But there were a handful of other exciting product announcements made in Seattle that are just as important.
With the announcement of SAS on-the-go capabilities, mobile dashboards were a huge hit throughout the conference. SAS was displayed on iPhones and iPads on the demo floor, in technology sessions and even during Opening Session.
The idea of putting business analytics on a phone is one that Development Manager Michael Thomas and his team of BI Dashboard developers have been pondering for quite some time. "At the root of the mobile dashboard thinking is that mobile devices simply don't compete with a workstation with multiple 20 inch monitors, with single smaller monitor, or even with a laptop," says Michael.
Naturally, SAS business intelligence should go where our users go. "The goal of these products is to provide customers with business intelligence quickly and conveniently with key performance indicators (including thermometers and speedometers), graphs, and other visuals that are attractive and easy to interpret," says Lisa Whitman, who works on usability for the SAS mobile dashboard applications, SAS BI Dashboard, and Information Delivery Portal.
And users agree. "While conducting a customer site visit recently, I was speaking to an executive who reminded me that a lot of times the people who are making decisions based on business intelligence have very little time, and therefore like to take information with them on the go, and look at it when they have spare time in-between meetings or at home," says Lisa. "It makes sense then to allow business intelligence dashboards to go wherever our customers need them."
