With all the talk about Viya... There's no question that the Viya platform brings capabilities to the analytics world that could really differentiatie SAS solutions from other competing offerings. Do we know of any plans to push it more as capability that empowers business solutions as opposed to the research environment? Seems like there is an opportunity there?? Begin to remove the open source comparison?
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Please understand that most ex-employees are not simply disgruntled. We are concerned about the place where we spent so much of our careers, and are trying to understand what’s happening there now.
Thanks @1fbx+1pYqO6eY for adding such informative content to this thread. “Average 30X faster than Competitors” is most impressive. That should be marketable.
And yet, a search for “SAS Viya” turns up fewer than ten US job postings on LinkedIn or Indeed.com.
Perhaps it’s overpriced?
@sqo+1pYqO6eY I think you hit the nail on the head. The answer lies somewhere in between. You can easily see disgruntled pot-stirrers on every post alongside people who seem to know what they are talking about. SAS definitely has its issues and a checkered past to some degree in regards to decision making, but also seems to be trying to row in the correct direction. The question becomes was it done in time?
The following is a study.
https://futurumgroup.com/sas-viya/
Can give you some insight into performance of Viya. SAS did sponsor this, but the testing documentation is very detailed and in some cases positive toward open source (negative towards Viya). Take a read and decide for yourself. Some of looks promising.
I can say for certain Viya makes up more revenue than many here would lead you to believe. It’s not at 9.4 level yet, but is growing steadily. Does it have some glaring gaps in features compared to some 9.4 equivalents, yes. But, it also has some fairly recent features that are very useful and have potential to be strong selling points. It’s a work in progress, but as a whole it is starting to look a little more put together compared to the last few years.
Sorry -- after posting, I realized that you intended to answer @suy+1pYqO6eY, but addressed it to @g-n+1pYqO6eY. Thanks for correcting how long Viya has been on the market. Still, whether that's 15 years, or only 7 years, @suy+1pYqO6eY's argument remains.
For my (@g-n+1pYqO6eY's) question, age is irrelevant. I only care whether Viya sells. In my limited understanding, the reason for Viya's existence is performance. Does it run 10X faster than open source equivalents?
If Viya is only 2X faster, I doubt that's enough differential to justify its price -- because open source is free, or nearly so.
The same argument applies to solutions built on top of Viya. Even if 2X faster, those solutions would be cheaper if built on open source.
Viya looks marketable if it runs SAS PROCs and DATA step. Some existing SAS customers would buy it, to make their SAS code run faster.
Please correct me if I'm wrong. As things stand, if I were a customer, there are two reasons I'd buy Viya: 1) it runs new solutions faster than I can imagine, or 2) it runs my existing SAS jobs faster than they run now.
"There's no question that the Viya platform brings capabilities to the analytics world that could really differentiate SAS solutions from other competing offerings. "
Not! Have you not been reading all the threads on this site? Jeez!
Age is irrelevant. Again, what, specifically, are those differentiating capabilities?
And if I'm a customer, why would I buy them, when there are open source alternatives?
… overstated inaccuracy …
@g-n+1pYqO6eY
Yours is in overstated and accuracy.
The CAS team was founded 10 years and 2 months ago, but the earliest CAS implementation was not available for Internal consumption until August 2014. The term Viya did not come into existence until early 2016 when SAS needed a way of describing their new distributed computing architecture for Global Forum.
What, specifically, are those differentiating capabilities?
OP, your optimism is admirable, but does not measure up to reality.
The reality is that 15 years have been invested in Viya and only a pittance of the market sees value in Viya.