Respected IT industry analyst firm 451 Research has published an assessment of SAS High-Performance Analytics. The report, SAS delivers in-memory analytics for Teradata and Greenplum, notes that the appliance-ready software is unique among its competitors because of the tight integration between the in-memory offering and database appliances of SAS partners EMC Greenplum and Teradata.

SAS, the leader in business analytics software and services, announced the general availability of SAS High-Performance Analytics last December. The software delivers results from complex analyses in minutes instead of hours, or hours instead of days, helping business leaders take fast, decisive actions.

“In-memory analytics delivers improved performance advantages by taking full advantage of multithreaded high-performance parallel environments, and requires a more tightly integrated approach,” said the 451 Research report by Data Management and Analytics Research Director Matt Aslett.

“SAS' [high-performance analytics] approach is differentiated by its integration with the database provider, as well as the fact that it makes use of in-memory capabilities for data exploration and model development, plus analytic processing,” according to the 451 Research report.

The report attributes SAS’ advantage over its high-performance competition to the wide use of SAS Analytics and the depth of SAS skills among analytics experts. The 451 Research report did observe a growing challenge to SAS from rival vendors.

“Competition is nothing new to SAS,” said Jim Davis, SAS Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. “Competition simply validates our understanding that customers need faster fact-based decisions in an increasingly competitive business climate. Our clear advantage is 35 years of investment in our market-leading analytics.”

With an in-memory architecture, SAS High-Performance Analytics removes the limitations of trying to analyze large volumes of data with current modeling tools, and eliminates the restrictions imposed by existing computing infrastructures. Firms in data-intensive industries, including banking, capital markets, insurance, government, retail and others, can significantly improve ROI with the new SAS software.

SAS High-Performance Analytics solves complex business problems, such as large-scale targeted customer acquisition campaigns or loan default risk assessment that requires sophisticated, high-end analytics and access to large volumes of data. Without the power of SAS High-Performance Analytics, returns from marketing campaigns may be less than optimal, or too much credit exposure can lead to high default rates and charge-offs.