Jim Goodnight and Jim Davis, respectively SAS CEO and SVP/CMO, recently took to the road to tell the media about the unique capabilities of SAS Visual Analytics and how this software rocks the enterprise software world. The resulting news coverage was off the charts.

With stops in New York City and San Francisco, Jim and Jim provided 1-on-1 sessions with global media including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Economist and Bloomberg/Business Week. They also met with IT outlets such as InformationWeek, eWeek and Information Management, as well as industry magazines including Stores, American Banker, Bank Systems and Technology, Bank Technology News and Managing Automation.

But beyond bi-coastal briefings, we looped in international and other US media through two virtual international press conferences hosted by product management VP Randy Guard. As Jim and Jim met with San Francisco media, duplicate calls for 10 am and 9 pm EDT on Wed. March 21 helped us reach all times zones with the big news, hitting two dozen EMEA press and a similar number in AP.

The resulting news coverage is an indication of the excitement around data visualization for big data problems:

• “SAS Makes Its Bid to Democratize Data Analysis” New York Times
• “SAS Introduces Big Data Visual Analytics Platform” InformationWeek
• “Big Data or Big Hassle? New SAS Tool Offers Simplicity” American Banker 
• “SAS Launches New In Memory Graphical UI Analytics Enterprise” eWeek
• “New SAS Visual Analytics for Big Data” Information Management
• “Banks Did 'Big Data' Before It Was Cool, SAS CEO Says” American Banker

And that's just the first round of news stories.  Other publications plan to cover the new data visualization product within longer features later.

If you want the news straight from the source, you can read about the new product and view more screen shots in the online press kit and the news release.

Other results from the press tour that indicte a high level of excitement about visualizing data in the big data world include:

• At last count, 40 news stories with more being reported daily.
• One Computerworld article was re-released on dozens of global sister publications including Infoworld, CIO UK, TechWorld Australia and many others.
• Hundreds of sites capturing and replaying the SAS Visual Analytics news release.
• Centerstage treatment in upcoming feature articles on BI, visualization, analytics, in-memory or high performance analytics topics.