SAS VA Use case

[tommy81]

Can SAS Visual Analytics be used as a pure Data Visualization  similar to QlikView or Tableu. Or is it coming as a packaged solution with the LASR Server for High performance computing.

Also how does it fare against the above on Cost/License.

Kindly provide details if any.

[PeterWijers]

HI tommy,

I know that several companies compared SAS VA with Qlickview.

From 2 of them I know for sure they prefered SAS VA.

We also use SAS VA  for powerfull management reporting.

I have no price comparing for you.

greetings

[tommy81]

Thanks Peter.

One more thing to know is whether SAS VA comes along with SAS  BI suite items like DI Studio, InfoMap and WRS, or is it used to build on top of these Bi Stacks .

[PeterWijers · Accepted solution]

Hi tommy,

The second remark in your first question is right, it is a package.

You can easily get data into the "in memory" LASR server and analyze/report it.

The interface is very user friendly and almost no need from IT for this is needed.

Greetings

[Quentin]

SAS VA is a separate product than the BI suite.  It is not part of the BI suite, nor is it built on top of the BI stacks (as I understand it).  Licensed separately, has distinct hardware needs, etc.

[RickStyll_SAS]

Tommy,

Just wanted to address the part of your question about pure data visualization, like other tools you are familiar with. The LASR Server can certainly processing extremely large volumes of data quickly when deployed on distributed hardware.  However, you can use it to visualize small tables, such as those you might import from a .csv file or Excel Spreadsheet.  As Peter mentioned, LASR comes packaged with Visual Analytics, and you can also deploy it entirely on a single machine if you don’t have big data needs.  I wasn’t certain what you meant specifically by pure data visualization.  Based on the context, it seemed like you might be referring to self-service visual exploration of smaller data.

For more comprehensive comparisons of SAS Visual Analytics to alternatives, such as QlikView and Tableau that you mentioned, I would recommend looking at independent sources from industry thought leaders and analyst firms, such as Cindi Howson’s BI Scorecard (http://www.biscorecard.com), Forrester (http://www.forrester.com/Business-Intelligence), and Gartner (https://www.gartner.com/doc/2668318), to name a few.

Rick Styll

[SarahRose]

Here is a comparison SAS Visual Analytics vs. Tableau by real users. Some of the users talk about price which has not been mentioned in this thread but was asked about in the original question.