Likelihood to Recommend KNIME Analytics Platform is excellent for people who are finding Excel frustrating, this can be due to errors creeping in due to manual changes or simply that there are too many calculations which causes the system to slow down and crash. This is especially true for regular reporting where a KNIME Analytics Platform workflow can pull in the most recent data, process it and provide the necessary output in one click. I find KNIME Analytics Platform especially useful when talking with audiences who are intimidated by code. KNIME Analytics Platform allows us to discuss exactly how data is processed and an analysis takes place at an abstracted level where non-technical users are happy to think and communicate which is often essential when they are subject matter experts whom you need for guidance. For experienced programmers KNIME Analytics Platform is a double-edged sword. Often programmers wish to write their own code because they are more efficient working that way and are constrained by having to think and implement work in nodes. However, those constraints forcing development in a "KNIME way" are useful when working in teams and for maintenance compared to some programmers' idiosyncratic styles.
Rob Blanford Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Manager
Read full review SAS Advanced Analytics excels with projects that have at least 3 parts. The first part is the ability to address and compare different modeling types. Suppose you are an analyst interested in predicting home prices or whether an individual will reapply for unemployment insurance. There are lots of model types that could work for these two situations. SAS Advanced Analytics makes it easy (although not as easy as SAS Enterprise Miner) to compare the performance of different modeling types, such as comparing support vector machines with random forest models. A second scenario that SAS Advanced Analytics does a good job at is making the analysis reproducible. By showing the lineage of analyses, another analyst is able to follow the work of the previous analyst. This is a huge advantage for individuals working in corporations or governments. The third area SAS Advanced Analytics is useful is in text analytics. The field is huge now, and I haven't come across a software that makes text analytics as easy as SAS Advanced Analytics.
Read full review Pros Summarize instrument level financial data with relevant statistics Map transactions from core extracts to groups of like transactions using rule engines Machine learning using random forests and other techniques to analyze data and identify correlations for use in predictive models Fill out sampling data from averages. Read full review Complex Survey Analysis- SAS is a great resource if you need to analyze complex survey data. One can easily write code for this by inserting (survey) in front of the procedure with the weight, cluster, and strata variables. (ex: surveyfreq) Modeling/ Graphing- SAS creates clean and easy to understand graphs and models which take visual data to the next level. Support- There is a large SAS Advanced analytics online support in place. It is easy to find help on many procedures that you will use in this software. Read full review Cons It does not have proper visualization. Some other BI tools (QlikView) have much easier functions for data interaction. Some other BI tools (Tableau) can be set up much faster. It is not an easy tool to use for non-tech savvy staff. Read full review SAS Analytics does not have very good graphic capabilities. Their advanced graphics packages are expensive, and still not very appealing or intuitive to customize. SAS Analytics is not as up-to-date when it comes to advanced analytical techniques as R or other open-source analytics packages. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We are happy with Knime product and their support. Knime AP is versatile product and even can execute Python scripts if needed. It also supports R execution as well; however, it is not being used at our end
Read full review Not only does SAS become easier to use as the user gets more familiar with its capabilities, but the customer service is excellent. Any issues with SAS and their technical team is either contacting the user via email, chat, text, WebEx, or phone. They have power users that have years of experience with SAS there to help with any issue.
Read full review Usability KNIME Analytics Platform offers a great tradeoff between intuitiveness and simplicity of the user interface and almost limitless flexibility. There are tools that are even easier to adopt by someone new to analytics, but none that would provide the scalability of KNIME when the user skills and application complexity grows
Read full review If SAS Enterprise Guide is utilized any beginning user will be able to shorten the learning curve. This is allow the user a plethora of basic capabilities until they can utilize coding to expand their needs in manipulating and presenting data. SAS is also dedicated to expanding this environment so it is ever growing.
Read full review Reliability and Availability SAS probably has the most market saturation out of all of the analytics software worldwide. They are in every industry and they are knowledgable about every industry. They are always available to take questions, solve issues, and discuss a company's needs. A company that buys SAS software has a dedicated representative that is there for all of their needs.
Read full review Performance Although nothing is perfect, SAS is almost there. The software can handle billions of rows of data without a glitch and runs at a quick pace regardless of what the user wants to perform. SAS products are made to handle data so performance is of their utmost important. The software is created to run things as efficiently as SAS software can to maximize performance.
Read full review Support Rating KNIME's HQ is in Europe, which makes it hard for US companies to get customer service in time and on time. Their customer service also takes on average 1 to 2 weeks to follow up with your request. KNIME's documentation is also helpful but it does not provide you all the answers you need some of the time.
Ivan Cui Data Scientist - Biotech Data Science Digtialization (BDSD)
Read full review SAS is generally known for good support that's one of the main reasons to justify the cost of having SAS licenses within our organization is knowing that customer support is just a quick phone call away. I've usually had good experiences with the SAS customer support team it's one of the ways in which the company stands out in my view.
Read full review In-Person Training SAS has regional and national conferences that are dedicated to expanding users' knowledge of the software and showing them what changes and additions they are making to the software. There are user groups in most of the major cities that also provide multi-day seminars that focus on specific topics for education. If online training isn't the best way for the user, there is ample in-person training available.
Read full review Online Training There are online videos, live classes, and resource material which makes training very easy to access. However, nothing is circumstantial so applying your training can get tricky if the user is performing complex tasks. When purchasing software, SAS will also allocate education credits so the user(s) can access classes and material online to help expand their knowledge.
Read full review Implementation Rating KNIME Analytics Platform is easy to install on any Windows, Mac or Linux machine. The KNIME Server product that is currently being replaced by the KNIME Business Hub comes as multiple layers of software and it took us some time to set up the system right for stability. This was made harder by KNIME staff's deeper expertise in setting up the Server in Linux rather than Windows environment. The KNIME Business Hub promises to have a simpler architecture, although currently there is no visibility of a Windows version of the product.
Read full review Ask as many questions you can before the install to understand the process. Since a third party does the installation your company is sort of a passanger and it is easy to get lost in the process. It also helps to have all users and IT support involved in the install to help increase the knowledge as to how SAS runs and what it needs to perform correctly.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Having used both the
Alteryx and [KNIME Analytics] I can definitely feel the ease of using the software of
Alteryx . The [KNIME Analytics] on the other hand isn't that great but is 90% of what
Alteryx can do along with how much ease it can do. Having said that, the 90% functionality and UI at no cost would be enough for me to quit using
Alteryx and move towards [KNIME Analytics].
Read full review We had major use of SAS in forecasting where it doesn't require high level of coding knowledge and which has highly efficient models built in which can give good results on forecasts without lot of manual intervention. This tool was designed specifically for forecasting and hence was always a better choice compared to other tools.
Read full review Scalability It all depends on the type of SAS product the user has. Scaleability differs from product to product, and if the user has SAS Office Analytics the scaleability is quite robust. This software will satisfy the majority of the company's analytic needs for years to come. In addition, if SAS is not meeting the users needs the company can easily find SAS solutions that will.
Read full review Return on Investment It is suited for data mining or machine learning work but If we're looking for advanced stat methods such as mixed effects linear/logistics models, that needs to be run through an R node. Thinking of our peers with an advanced visualization techniques requirement, it is a lagging product. Read full review SAS Advanced Analytics is not the cheapest software on the market. The overall cost was weighed against free, open-source software tools. The overall return, I think, was quite positive because SAS Advanced Analytics saves enormous amounts of time compared to the open-source software tools. At first, adopting SAS Advanced Analytics was a negative return because it took time for individuals to change their analytics habits and adjust to superior tools available at their discretion. SAS Advanced Analytics has replaced the need to hire less expensive R or Python programmers. So, although the software requires an initial expensive upfront investment, the ease of use makes it so that other areas of expenditure save money. Read full review ScreenShots KNIME Analytics Platform Screenshots