Thanks for the feedback and comment Al Briggs! I obviously left out a few details due to the short-form nature of blogging so let me clarify a few things :+)

First of all, SAS is not moving into the Visual modelling space because it is crowded or cool, we are supporting a visual-based approach to advanced analytics because we believe it will make these capabilities more accessible and drive more adoption of advanced analytics and that can only be a good thing.

Secondly, we understand that the user requirements around modelling vary and we are definitely not "putting all our eggs into one basket". In fact, not only do we continue to expand our support for SAS programmers, but SAS Viya also supports a programmatic approach to modelling using open source languages today.

Thirdly, not only are we NOT moving away, we are doubling down on "Enterprise-Class" modelling capabilities and a metadata-driven approach to modelling via Viya. We have expanded our governance capabilities in SAS Viya in terms of model management and decisionings and continue to offer true end-to-end metadata lineage analysis capabilities via SAS Viya.

Ultimately, we believe we can build on our strong foundations (all the goodness that you mentioned and knows!) that our customers have depended on over many years but also evolve and extend to support new requirements and personas in what is a rapidly changing world!