As you heard in Sunday’s Opening Session, SAS reinvests more than a fifth of total revenue in R&D. According to Mark Torr, Global Technology Practice Director, that investment goes into enhancements, updates and new products that SAS® users – you – request. Torr and several SAS employees performed live demos on stage to show the ease and speed of the new tools. The demos also highlighted the improved visualization capabilities.
There were several major improvements made to SAS 9.2 to reduce the complexity and improve deployment and migration. One such change, according to Torr, is to take all of the best practices from previous deployments and wrap them into a deployment wizard.
Two enhancements caused a stir in the room and on Twitter:
• SAS is now making the Interactive Dashboard available in Microsoft SharePoint. There will be no need for additional coding – it’s a simple point-and-click interface. (This will be available in about two months.)
• The Schedule Manager plug-in is a new graphical interface that defines dependencies and removes dot-file juggling.
“The thing that we’re really proud of is the fact that we’ve made tasks that you do every day faster and simpler to do,” said Torr.
Other demonstrations highlighted SAS® Enterprise Miner TM 6.1, SAS Model Manager 2.2, SAS Text Miner 4.1, SAS Forecast Server, using JMP® 8 Graph Builder with SAS Simulation Studio, and using SAS Simulation Studio with SAS/OR® in what-if scenarios to study operational performance.
The audience was spellbound by the live demonstrations especially when Keith Collins, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, began the wrap-up. He demonstrated some developments for 2010 that sparked and sizzled, including Flash graphs and SAS iPhone apps. The crowd was impressed.
