Digital transformation continues to change our relationship with technology. As part of this change, the world is transforming from one of technology-literate people to one of people-literate technology.
What do we mean by people-literate technology? We mean smart, automated, reliable, explainable decision systems that operate at scale. Analytics and AI play an essential role in building these systems.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, speaks of tech intensity, an organization’s ability to turn tools and technologies into their own problem-solving digital solutions. As part of these efforts, Microsoft is building out Microsoft Azure as the world’s computer.
If you are a SAS® user, you know we have awesome technology, expertise and people at SAS. If we combine our strengths with the technology, expertise and people of the right partner, the sky is the limit.
Or maybe we should say the cloud is the limit.
Partnering in the cloud
Yesterday, we announced a strategic partnership around analytics, artificial intelligence and cloud computing between SAS and Microsoft.
This partnership is a milestone for SAS. It runs deep, affects every part of the technology road map, and can shape the future of analytics and AI in the market.
With Microsoft Azure as the SAS preferred cloud provider, we will be working together to provide the best experience for customers transitioning to the cloud. We are working on extensive integrations of our SAS® Viya® platform with Azure services and many joint go-to-market activities. And we will build joint solutions, for example, in IoT.
The preferred partnership agreement signifies a strong integration between our products, but customers working with other cloud providers will have our full and continued support as well.
Aligning with the right partner
The cultures and missions of SAS and Microsoft are well aligned. And the journeys our companies are on led us to meet in the cloud.
- Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
- SAS’ mission is to empower and inspire with the most trusted analytics to improve lives through better decisions.
At SAS we are guided by the principles of analytics:
- To bring analytics to everyone, everywhere.
- To differentiate with analytics.
- To integrate analytics –which is about more than algorithms.
Wherever data goes, analytics follows. So naturally, as data moves to the cloud, analytics will follow.
When surveyed, more than half of SAS customers told us they are actively migrating their analytic workloads to the cloud. Most of these workloads will run on public cloud infrastructures, and it is our goal to help customers move to the cloud and enrich the cloud ecosystem with AI and analytics capabilities.
Microsoft is the right strategic partner to help us do that. Microsoft believes in the democratization of technology; SAS believes in the democratization of analytics. Both companies know that analytics is at the heart of digital transformation.
Microsoft is known for building intelligent platforms and operating systems that are used by organizations around the world. Together, SAS and Microsoft can build the next OS: the operating system of digital transformation.
1 Comment
Very interesting alliance