SAP and SAS to Extend the Power of the Real-Time Enterprise With Strategic Partnership

[Former Member]

The news passed very quietly, I wonder what this will mean in the future for KXEN and PA? Is this SAS partnership really required to make HANA more popular? Will SAS become a takeover target? To big to swallow at 2.9 billion revenue - buy for 12billion?

http://global.sap.com/news-reader/index.epx?category=ALL&articleID=21767

Comments?

[former_member193591]

I came across this Blog .. pretty old

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/big-data/teradata-and-sas-partner-on-analytics-appliance/367

This talks about SAS strategic partnership with Teradata ... Guess we can infer that SAS is clear about partnering all the top players that will complement their processing speed. SAS is just leveraging SAP HANA considering it's strong dedication & Focused road map ... and to my knowledge SAS might look at HANA as a Database that has the capabilities of integrating into most of the Landscapes / Architectural solutions ...  only 🙂

[Henry_Banks]

Hi Denis,

Indeed this SAS partnership was announced at TechEd Vegas this October.  It's really going to be of great benefit to SAS to be able to leverage the in-memory HANA DB's processing power .

the KXEN and PA roadmaps continue to evolve, i'm hopeful a clearer communication of intent will be materialised soon publically by a Product/Solution owner.

• My understanding is that KXEN "infiniteInsight" MODELER features will appear in the standalone PA client (to benefit from Lumira's visualisation technology, whilst cross-polinating KXEN's ease-of-use into the product.)

• But there will also be alternative KXEN deployment options into HANA, (to go via the PAL libraries) in order to benefit from processing speed.

this is all to be confirmed at a later date by the correct person. the above is purely my own guesswork and opinion.

Regards,

H

[former_member193591]

Hi Henry,

By the way SAAS & SAS are different things;

SAAS- Software as a service

SAS- Statistical Analysis Software [Analytic tool] .... guess we are talking about this.

Hi Denis,

To address your point, SAP has done that before.

If you look at HANA hardware, SAP partnered with Fujitsu, Dell, HP and so on. These kind of strategic partnerships are part and parcel of the game, especially when it is a win-win situation.

To be more clear, this is not a merger or acquisition as you know, this is a joint venture of state of the art Hardware technology combined together with Analytics Market topper which might make it look unbeatable. Needless to mention that KXEN & SAS majorly have different customer base, and so might not be wise to compare them. It's like Xcelsius & Webi, both being BI tool caters different cases of business for same customers or different customers.

SAS might try to leverage the power of HANA and SAP's customer base ... simultaneously SAP would try to do the same.

We as a third eye can interpret or guess based on the Market scenarios. Well, the market and Time decides the ventures & acquisition ... what would happen tomorrow ... no one knows ... tomorrow is a mystery so we wait and watch.

Regards,

Arvind E

[Henry_Banks]

apologies typo

[Former Member]

Hi Arvind,

As you may know KXEN, SAP and SAS are all mentioned in the same Gartner Magic quadrant report and they have competing products. Obviously not many customers will buy both products , as they have different needs and so yes they have a different customer base, but I would still say they are "starting to compete" for the same customer base.

With regards to hardware, SAP doesn't do hardware there was a pure need for hardware partners and there is no competition on that side. They are long standing partners of SAP.

Nevertheless this may be a win-win situation, SAP gaining HANA ground and SAS gaining in sales. SAP HANA must take priority of Predictive Analysis sales.

Thank you for your insight Arvind. Looking to hear more from SAP 🙂

Kind Regards,

Denis

[former_member193591]

Thank you for responding Denis, KXEN is in strong performers quadrant; SAP & SAS are in leader quadrant; I have written more info on KXEN.

http://scn.sap.com/thread/3456496

And if we have to say that they [SAS/ SAP / KXEN] are competing with same customer base ... then we will have to conclude that all the players in specific quadrant mentioned in Gartner's report are competing against each other .. which might not be true ...

When we talk about customer base or target customers, we mention the core target customers or potential based on their current grounds or current advocacy leads by satisfied customers ...

Otherwise, on an ideal world, everyone would want to have the entire world as their customers for which we could say that everyone has the same customer base 🙂

Yep, I will wait for the Market to react ...

Regards,

Arvind E

[Former Member]

In the analytics tool space it is pretty common to have multiple tools for different functions.  I've worked at large companies that did predictive analytics and all have required multiple tools.  Ex.  PC SAS for most general modeling, plus a separate tool to do decision trees because SAS really doesn't do a good job of those, plus a specialty tool for industry-specific modeling needs.  Many data scientists use lots of tools (see KD Nuggets somewhat unscientific but still interesting annual survey), in fact in the US the average is 3.4 tools.

Personally, I think giving HANA the ability to run/score (not build) SAS models doesn't encourage companies running HANA to buy SAS, but moreso removes a potential barrier or concern for companies that already own/run SAS who are considering HANA and have SAS-consumption capabilities in their existing databases.