SAS Viya Overview
SAS Viya is a comprehensive, end-to-end data and AI platform designed to streamline and enhance the entire analytics lifecycle, from data management and model development to deployment and monitoring. Here’s a detailed look at what SAS Viya does and its key features.
What SAS Viya Does
SAS Viya is engineered to transform raw data into trustworthy insights, enabling organizations to make informed, data-driven decisions. It integrates data from virtually any source, regardless of size or complexity, and supports the full spectrum of analytics tasks, including data preparation, model development, deployment, and ongoing management.
Key Features and Functionality
Data Management
- Integration and Automation: SAS Viya integrates data from various sources, utilizing intelligent automation to streamline data preparation and reduce bottlenecks. It offers no-code and automated ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes, saving hours of manual work.
- Data Quality and Governance: The platform ensures high-quality and reliable data through robust data governance, tracking data and model lineage to identify which models need retraining if data changes.
Model Development
- Comprehensive Machine Learning Tools: SAS Viya provides intuitive machine learning tools with automated feature engineering capabilities, offering intelligent recommendations for faster and smarter decisions. It supports end-to-end data mining and machine learning processes with both visual and programming interfaces, catering to users of all skill levels.
- Efficient Modeling and Model Tournaments: The platform speeds up model development with quick-start model recommendations and transparent model tuning. It identifies the most effective models through model tournaments, ensuring optimized analytics for specific business needs.
Deployment and Monitoring
- Seamless Deployment: SAS Viya enables hassle-free deployment of models across various environments, automating performance monitoring and allowing for quick retraining of models. It simplifies the creation and management of model collections and embeds models into operational systems to monitor their performance in real-time.
- MLOps Capabilities: For MLOps engineers, SAS Viya provides a single interface to govern, validate, test, and deploy models efficiently. It offers automatic performance reports and visualizations to monitor model health.
Performance and Scalability
- Speed and Efficiency: SAS Viya performs data and AI tasks significantly faster than competitors, with an average speed increase of 30 times. It also reduces cloud operating costs by up to 86% compared to alternative solutions.
- Scalability: The platform scales according to computational needs, handling large or small datasets without performance degradation. Its cloud-native architecture maximizes scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.
Collaboration and Accessibility
- Visual and Low-Code Experience: SAS Viya offers a visual, low-code, and no-code experience, making it accessible to users of all skill levels. It includes drag-and-drop tools for crafting data pipelines and built-in automation for data exploration and reporting.
- Integration with Open-Source Technologies: The platform integrates with various open-source technologies like Python and R, leveraging robust analytics solutions.
Decisioning and Real-Time Analytics
- Real-Time Event Detection and Decision Governance: SAS Viya combines business rules, real-time event detection, and decision governance to automate operational decisions. It also supports advanced real-time analytics on streaming data through SAS Event Stream Processing.
Benefits for Users
- Data Engineers: Save hours with automated ETL processes, access data regardless of size or complexity, and ensure data quality through lineage and transparency.
- Data Scientists: Accomplish data exploration and reporting significantly faster, use prebuilt model templates, and optimize models with transparent tuning.
- MLOps Engineers: Govern, deploy, and monitor models efficiently across environments, with automatic performance reports and visualizations.
- Business Analysts: Achieve a higher completion rate of data and AI lifecycle tasks, unlock more insights with built-in automation, and explain work easily with natural language descriptions.
In summary, SAS Viya is a powerful platform that accelerates the analytics lifecycle, enhances collaboration, and ensures trustworthy AI practices. Its robust features and scalability make it an ideal solution for organizations seeking to derive maximum value from their data and AI investments.