Seven of my favorite big data presentations from SAS Global Forum 2016

Nowadays, nearly every organization analyzes data to some degree, and most are working with “Big Data.”  At SAS Global Forum 2016 in Las Vegas, a vast number of papers were presented to share new and interesting ways our customers are using data to IMAGINE. CREATE. INNOVATE., as this year’s conference tagline reminds us.

Below you’ll find a collection of a few of my favorites on big data topics, ranging from SAS Grid Manager to Hadoop to SAS Federation Server. The common point? It’s easier than ever to modernize your architecture now. I hope these papers help you continue to advance your organization.

Paper 2020-2016: SAS® Grid Architecture Solution Using IBM Hardware
Whayne Rouse and Andrew Scott, Humana Inc.

This paper is an examination of Humana journey from SAS® 9.2 to SAS® 9.4M3 and from a monolithic environment to a SAS Grid Manager environment on new hardware and new storage. You can find tips such as the importance of understanding the old environment before starting and applying that understanding to building the new environment.

Paper 11684-2016: Multi-Tenancy in SAS® – Is It Worth the Fight?
Christopher Blake, RBS; Sergey Iglov, RBS; Dileep Pournami, RBS; Ekaitz Goienola, SAS UK

This paper explains how Royal Bank of Scotland analyzed the benefits of creating a shared Enterprise Business Intelligence platform in SAS alongside the risks and organizational barriers to the approach. The objective is to have a single, multi-tenant environment offering a variety of SAS software, including SAS Grid Manager, SAS Visual Analytics, SAS Enterprise Miner, and others.

Paper 11562-2016: Beyond Best Practice: Grid Computing in the Modern World
Jan Bigalke, Allianz Managed Operation & Services SE & Gregory S. Nelson, ThotWave Technologies

After an introduction detailing how SAS Grid Manager works, this paper describes multiple best practices implemented at Allianz Managed Operation & Services SE to configure and administer a multi-tenant grid environment.

Paper SAS6281-2016: Introducing SAS® Grid Manager for Hadoop
Cheryl Doninger and Doug Haigh, SAS Institute Inc.

With this paper you can learn the capabilities and benefits of SAS Grid Manager for Hadoop as well as some configuration tips. You will also find sample SAS Grid jobs to illustrate different ways to access and analyze your Hadoop data with your SAS Grid jobs.

Paper SAS2140-2016: Best Practices for Resource Management in Hadoop
James Kochuba, SAS Institute Inc.

YARN is the Hadoop answer to resource orchestration. SAS technologies can take advantage of a shared Hadoop environment, creating the ultimate analytic environment. This paper helps to set the expectations and tuning choices when setting up and using a shared Hadoop environment encompassing SAS technologies such as SAS/ACCESS® Interfaces, SAS® In-Database Analytics, SAS® In-Memory Analytics and SAS® Grid Computing.

Paper SAS2180-2016: How to Leverage the Hadoop Distributed File System as a Storage Format for the SAS® Scalable Performance Data Server and the SAS® Scalable Performance Engine
Steven Sober, SAS Institute Inc.

In this paper Steven explores how the SAS Scalable Performance Data Server and SAS Scalable Performance Data Engine leverage the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). He explores the different capabilities of both engines and shows benchmarks detailing the differences in reading/writing compressed tables versus regular ones.

Paper SAS6223-2016 What’s New in SAS® Federation Server 4.2
Tatyana Petrova, SAS Institute Inc.

This paper provides an overview of the latest features of the product and includes examples for leveraging SAS Federation Server capabilities, such as data quality functions, data masking, and query performance optimization.

Seven of my favorite big data presentations from SAS Global Forum 2016 was published on SAS Users.