SAS is the total package
May 20, 2014

SAS is the total package

Erik Larsen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

9.4

Modules Used

  • Web Report Studio, Data Integration Studio

Overall Satisfaction with SAS Business Intelligence

This product is used by several departments across the organization. While it was slow getting groups engaged, it has solved the problem of accumulating data from different sources into one place where it can be reported on and analyzed, thus serving the need of having the identical data pulls across all organizations. It also solved the issue with having analysts using thin-client to access the data which alleviated the need to have software installed on their workstations.
  • Providing a seamless data access engine to monitor utilization of credit lines across several lines of business. Pulling data from Teradata, Oracle, DB2, Netezza and others to be combined into a single data source for reporting
  • Ability to analyze data through thin client which is able to access the data on the network
  • Reporting software which is also thin client and can be productionalized to refresh at any time.
  • Software setup and administration can be cumbersome if you do not have the right people to tune the product to operate efficiently
  • Data Integration product can be difficult for those who do not already have some data processing experience.
  • Difficult to get some departments to buy in to using the product as they are siloed into another product.
  • Having a stable reporting environment. That is, everyone is using the same starting data, thus alleviating differences for timing, etc.
  • Allows for a simple reporting environment for executives which do not have the technical knowledge to gather the data
There is no contest. SAS is easier maintain and has much more in the way of analytics than MicroStrategy has. It can pull from more than one data source and when the underlying architecture changes, it is much easier to maintain. More savvy analysts can perform more with SAS due to its data manipulation background.
It is best suited to when you have different data sources that need to be combined. It does not require a sourcing team (such as MicroStrategy) which needs to combine the data into one schema before you can start joining data.The question to ask is "Are you going to have a dedicated administrator?" This is a full time job and this person (persons) need to focus on that and not be expected to also analyze the data.

Using SAS Business Intelligence

There is no other product that can match SAS. There are some products that can compare to ETL but lack the analytics that SAS has. Others can perform a limited set of analytical procedures but lack the data processing that comes with SAS. Using thin client allows users to access data whenever they have an internet connection.