When tech experts want to hear directly from thought leaders in the industry, they turn to theCUBE for professionally produced interviews from wherever the global enterprise tech community is gathering.
During SAS Explore in Las Vegas, theCUBE stopped by the Innovation Hub to interview a few SAS leaders and get their take on some of the latest happenings and innovations at SAS and the broader technology industry.
Get an idea of some of the action in the short clips below, but be sure to watch and share the full lineup on demand.
Revolutionizing SAS: Launching Workbench, App Factory and strategizing generative AI for existing customers
During SAS Explore, we made huge announcements that included news about exciting new capabilities for SAS® Viya®. Alice McClure, Director of Product Marketing and Udo Sglavo, Vice President of Advanced Analytics, joined theCUBE to talk more about the forthcoming SAS Viya Workbench and SAS App Factory and what users need to be on the lookout for when it comes to generative AI. In that discussion, Sglavo laid out these three storylines.
- SAS Viya Workbench: A lightweight development environment that allows users to code quickly in a cloud-native and secure way. SAS Viya Workbench will be available in Q1 2024 and is primarily for developers and data scientists looking to code quickly.
- SAS App Factory: Also launching in Q1 2024. SAS App Factory is a rapid application development environment to build fit-for-purpose, AI-driven applications to simplify the integration of models into applications.
- Generative AI (GAI): Arguably the hottest topic within the technology sector right now and for good reason. For creators, SAS will use GAI to enhance productivity gains across the AI and analytics life cycle. For consumers, SAS will use GAI to deliver value with industry solutions.
"I think this [SAS Viya Workbench and SAS App Factory] is big, this is unique in the market and I believe this is one of the main stories that I would love for our attendees to take away," Sglavo said.
"With SAS Viya Workbench and SAS App Factory, it's all about software-as-a-service offerings. We want to make this a lightweight, accessible environment. We want to create a sandbox mentality for developers to be able to be innovative and to be able to do their work in an easy way. And have access to the data in a very straightforward fashion," McClure said.
Sglavo explained, "We are not aiming at building our own large language model (LLM). We have a broader strategy [to use] digital twins, synthetic data and LLMs to solve business problems."
Trust: The key to speed and success in running; how AI is affecting SAS customers; responsible innovation
Bryan Harris, Chief Technology Officer and Reggie Townsend, Vice President of the SAS Data Ethics Practice, joined theCUBE to discuss the broader discussion around AI and how everyone can get involved. The two also touched on responsible innovation and trust.
According to Harris, SAS wants to engage and support the developer community on their journey into AI, helping them be a part of the growth happening in the market. He also spoke about the potential of SAS Viya Workbench.
"We want to do this by providing SAS Viya Workbench, an incredibly efficient cloud development environment that allows them to get in there and choose the language of choice," Harris said. "Then you can fully integrate that into our entire AI and analytics life cycle."
On the flip side, when it comes to deploying AI models into production, SAS simplifies the process. SAS provides the tools needed to automate the development of purpose-built applications. This streamlines the path to putting models into action and getting them into production quickly.
Townsend acknowledged that SAS has been in this space for quite some time, as did Harris, but now it's about proving that AI can be done in a responsible and equitable way. "The question now is, how do we capture this moment, but at the same time, prove to the world that AI can be done in a responsible fashion, in an equitable fashion?" Townsend said.
Unleashing the power of collaboration: Microsoft and SAS’ revolutionary partnership boosts data and AI integration
Gavin Day, EVP, Office of the CEO, joined theCUBE with Michael Glaros, Product Manager, Microsoft Cloud for Industry AI, to talk about SAS and Microsoft's strategic partnership to bring transformational solutions to customers.
"Our customers want to consume analytics, AI and data management in the cloud and we've done pioneering work in a lot of ways to bring that forward to them," Day said.
The two industry leaders collaborate closely to analyze and clarify use cases, establish priority scenarios, and create plans to guide the way to production. Their ultimate goal is to demonstrate the potential possibilities and how to accelerate progress while combining the strengths of both SAS and Microsoft's AI offerings to help customers in their journey.
"For us, this is the beginning and scaling our industry solutions with Azure is going to be a critical component of that because there's the platform parts of our business and the customers that we talk to, and then there's the industry solutions that they're eager to adopt and get integrated with AI," Day said.
Day and Glaros agree that having SAS and Microsoft work together to produce solutions has helped customers solve problems and see what's possible with analytics and AI.
