SAS, a data and analytics company, today at its Innovate user conference in Orlando, Fla., pledged to invest $1 billion over the next three years to further develop advanced analytics solutions targeted at the unique needs of specific industries, especially banking, government, insurance, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and energy.
Thesel industry solutions will run on SAS Viya, SAS' cloud-native, massively artificial intelligence and analytics platform.
"Businesses face many challenges, from the threat of economic recession and stressed supply chains to workforce shortages and regulatory changes," said SAS CEO Jim Goodnight. "Through this investment, SAS will continue to support companies using AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics to fight fraud, manage risk, better serve customers and citizens, and much more. We remain steadfast in our ongoing commitment to innovation while delivering the market's best analytics."
The billion-dollar investment includes direct research and development, industry-focused line-of-business teams, and industry marketing efforts. It will fund the innovative work of SAS data scientists, statisticians and software developers working with consultants, systems engineers and marketers with specific industry experience.
SAS' network of partners, including Microsoft, will help in the development and rollout of the industry-specific solutions.
"SAS- decades-long leadership in creating powerful industry solutions and use of SAS Viya to move these solutions to the cloud is one of the key reasons why customers value our partnership," said Alvaro Celis, vice president of solutions area independent software vendor sales at Microsoft, said in a statement. "By tailoring AI and advanced analytics to the precise needs of banking, government, insurance, health care and other industries, SAS and Microsoft have created a crucial differentiator for our joint customers."
An example of this type of partnership is Azure confidential computing, a new technology – jointly delivered by Microsoft, SAS and chipmaker AMD – to protect highly sensitive data while it is in use in memory.