Imagine your company's analytics environment is like an old apartment building, with each unit having its own air conditioner. Each air conditioning unit has to be individually maintained and repaired by the building landlord or "super." The air conditioning units come from different manufactures and are of varying ages.  It can be challenging, to say the least, to keep all the air conditioners running efficiently, while trying to minimize repair and operating costs.

Now, imagine that same building with one central air conditioning unit on the top of the building, providing cool air to each apartment. All the landlord/super has to do now is manage one air conditioning unit for the entire building, while providing the tenants with the tools and controls to cool their respective apartments the way they want.

Much like the individual air conditioning units in the apartment building example above, many company's analytics capabilities are spread across the organization: set up, managed, run and supported by individual groups and departments.  These groups are limited in the amount and type of data they have access to, as well as the necessary tools to help make better business decisions.

When meeting with partners, my manager likes to tell stories and will often use the analogy above to describe the benefits of analytic modernization.

Just like the many different air conditioners in the opening analogy, many joint customers have acquired multiple versions of SAS and Oracle databases that are running across different departments and business units.  While this was sufficient years ago, it is a silo approach and important data and information is not being shared throughout the company, and the right questions are not being asked.   Modernizing a company’s current analytics investment is key in this age of big data.

For a real world modernization example, consider a regional bank that wanted to:

• Provide its commercial banking relationship managers with data and credit insights to improve new client acquisitions, increase share of wallet, and to cross/up-sell products.
• Receive early warning indicators about potential obligors' credit profiles.
• Have a 360-degree view of commercial clients.

SAS and Oracle are working closely with the bank to help modernize its analytics environment, bringing together internal, external and proprietary data from across the organization to get a complete and up-to-date view of customers.

Working in partnership to provide an integrated technology makes modernizing to a new analytical platform straightforward.  Benefits of analytical modernization include:

• Increased access to all types of data.
• Better governance of analytics projects.
• Improved performance analytics.
• Superior decision management proficiencies.

A joint modernization strategy can actually lower costs and improve processing speeds. Plus, businesses that modernize their infrastructures and analytics environments can take advantage of the latest advances to process large amounts of data in order to make decisions in a timely fashion.

You can learn more about the SAS and Oracle partnership, or read about SAS being named the Exastack ISV Partner of the Year.