I bet many of you didn’t even know the term machine learning five years ago. But Gartner did.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms, 2018 was just released, and SAS has been in the leader’s quadrant for five years straight.

According to Gartner, “This Magic Quadrant evaluates vendors of data science and machine-learning platforms. These are software products that data scientists use to help them develop and deploy their own data science and machine-learning solutions.” While classical machine learning has been around for a while, innovations around artificial intelligence (AI) are providing organizations new ways to improve efficiencies and unlock better outcomes for their customers.

However, realizing real-world benefits of AI still remains elusive for the largest majority of organizations. Excessive hype, unrealistic expectations and an array of buzzwords can make it difficult for organizations to understand real world value of AI. But because the promise of AI is so great, it isn’t an option to stay on the sidelines.

If the time to act on AI is now (and it is), organizations should look for a few key traits when choosing their AI partner.

• Proven leadership: SAS has been named a leader for five consecutive years, with Gartner noting “operational excellence” among SAS’ strengths in this year’s report.
• Support for a broad group of users: From business analysts to citizen data scientists. From expert data scientists to those who prefer highly visual interfaces, the SAS Platform meets the needs of a broad group of users and support this diverse group throughout the analytics lifecycle.
• Finally, expertise beyond AI: A real-world AI project may need Computer Vision (CV) or Natural Language Processing (NLP), but will always begin with data prep and end with a scaled deployment. The SAS Platform has the capabilities to support the end-to-end analytics lifecycle from discovery to deployment.

I happen to be a big fan of SAS AI capabilities, as well as having some bias. However, when looking for real-world results of improving efficiencies and enabling new capabilities, organizations will look to an AI provider who is a proven leader, can support diverse needs and can meet the needs across the entire analytics lifecycle. While the market is full of smart, talented and bright ideas around AI, SAS is the only choice for your AI projects.

Learn more about artificial intelligence for executives

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