In summer 2020, we launched our strategic partnership with Microsoft, announcing our plan to work together to help our customers. With world-class data and analytics, we are helping them solve their most critical business challenges using SAS® Viya® on Microsoft Azure.
In just three short years, we’ve made tremendous strides toward our goal, helping customers across geographies and industries meet and exceed their customers’ existing needs while driving innovation to address their future problems.
Here's a look back on some of the many notable successes we’ve seen together over the past year:
Helping customers through the power of partnership
The National Bank of Greece (NBG), the first commercial bank in the country, now boasts 180 years of ongoing operations and 5.5 million retail customers. The bank is vital in supporting the Greek economy, contributing to national development and promoting social transformation. In recent years, NBG has drafted a demanding business transformation plan to become more agile and modern while improving profitability, which includes migrating its data to the cloud.
To help with this transition, NBG expanded its strategic collaboration with SAS and chose SAS Viya as its central analytics management platform. The flexibility of SAS, combined with the Microsoft Azure cloud elasticity, helps the organization reshape the infrastructure based on needs, which arise not only from daily operations but also from new projects that are about to begin.
Having started in 1976 as a single flower shop in New York City, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. has grown into a $2.21 billion enterprise with more than a dozen gifting and sharing brands in its portfolio. The company has essentially doubled the size of its business over the past three years. To meet the demands of an increasingly dispersed workforce and a rapidly scaling business, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. turned to SAS Viya on Microsoft Azure.
“The ability to layer in the SAS portfolio on top of Azure gives us the ability to be flexible in unanticipated times. We’ve been able to appropriately govern our processes in a way that we’ve never done before, said Arnie Leap, CIO, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc.
Over the past several years, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. has undergone a major effort to further strengthen its analytical capabilities and enhance the customer experience. With the help of SAS Viya on Azure, the e-commerce retailer now has a modern, scalable, cloud-based analytics, AI and data management platform to support its growing business.
Making analytics more accessible with pay-as-you-go offering
As of September 2022, the Viya analytics platform is available in the Azure Marketplace on a pay-as-you-go basis. Customers who opt for this model now have access to essential data exploration, machine learning and model deployment analytics in various languages to enhance productivity and collaboration. The platform offers both low-code and no-code options, so it’s easier for customers to reap the benefits of SAS Viya and Microsoft Azure throughout the entire analytics.
Maximizing the power of data with new integrations
SAS and Microsoft continue to work together on industry-specific solutions that unite AI and analytics to generate profitable business outcomes.
“SAS’ decadeslong leadership in creating powerful industry solutions and use of SAS Viya to move these solutions to the cloud is one of the key reasons why customers value our partnership,” said Alvaro Celis, VP of Solutions Area ISV Sales for Microsoft. “By tailoring AI and advanced analytics to the precise needs of banking, government, insurance, health care and other industries, SAS and Microsoft have created a crucial differentiator for our joint customers.”
One example is Azure confidential computing, a new technology jointly delivered by Microsoft, SAS and chipmaker AMD, that is designed to provide enhanced protection for highly sensitive data while it is in use in memory. This technology can significantly improve privacy and data security for customers in highly regulated industries such as financial services, health care and government. Furthermore, it provides Viya customers with an even more secure AI and cloud computing platform to further reduce the risk of a breach and strengthen compliance. It also gives customers access to more extensive data pools for more powerful analytic models.
Preparing for the future
Together, SAS and Microsoft continue to invest heavily in the future of our partnership by exploring new opportunities and jointly developing new products and solutions. Over the past three years, we have created significant customer value by combining our complementary strengths in analytics, AI and the cloud. We do this to achieve our shared goal: democratizing AI and analytics by making it more accessible. To achieve this goal, we are bringing an enhanced focus to emerging technologies like AI copilots and generative AI. These technologies have the potential to transform the way businesses operate and make decisions, and our partnership embraces responsible innovation to move our customers and industries forward securely and responsibly.
Three years have brought remarkable growth, new solutions and expanded opportunities for our customers. We can’t wait to see what the future brings for our partnership.
