Global analytics company SAS posted $3.24 billion revenue, registering 1.25 percent growth, in 2017 despite increased customer demand for artificial intelligence, machine learning, fraud and risk management and cloud solutions.
SAS immediately announced the appointment of Oliver Schabenberger, its chief technology officer (CTO), as chief operating officer (COO), giving additional responsibilities to improve sales and product innovation.
SAS CEO Jim Goodnight said: “We are helping customers be competitive with technologies such as analytics for the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.”
SAS achieved the highest growth in Asia Pacific and Latin America as customers adopted more strategic uses of analytics. The analytics company gained business from Government, manufacturing, retail and financial services.
Some of the latest global customers of SAS include Cargill, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Chicago Bears and American Honda Motor.
SAS revenue contributors
# Cloud revenue of SAS rose 15%
# Risk management business revenue grew 35%
# Data Integration grew 11%
# Fraud and security solutions revenue up 11%
More than one-third of new sales are coming via SAS global channel partners.
SAS IoT division
SAS has created an IoT division combining R&D and marketing expertise that will continue SAS’ focus on providing edge analytics that add value to customers’ IoT investments. SAS plans to build out a similar business unit around fraud management.
Companies applying SAS analytics to IoT challenges include GE Transportation, Lockheed Martin and Octo Telematics. The IoT division will offer industry expertise in manufacturing, energy and utilities, government, retail, insurance and health care.
Jason Mann will lead the new division as vice president of IoT. Mann previously was the director of product management for industry solutions and IoT. The IoT Division reports directly to SAS COO/CTO Oliver Schabenberger.
SAS revenue associated with IoT grew 60 percent. IDC estimates the size of the analytics market in IoT will grow to over $23 billion by 2020. An estimated 20.4 billion connected things are projected to be generating massive data volumes by 2020.
SAS investment
SAS will make investment in embedding artificial intelligence across SAS portfolio. SAS reinvests about twice the average of major technology firms into R&D – 26 percent in 2017.
SAS chief marketing officer Randy Guard said: “SAS delivers a platform that addresses the full analytics life cycle – data, discovery and deployment of decisions. Along with the openness that the SAS Platform offers, we enable our customers to bring their data and analytics together across their entire data science community.”
