Business Intelligence

RED HAT AND SAS. MAKING ANALYTICS MORE POWERFUL AND AFFORDABLE.

"The Decision Science team at Barclay needed a reliable, cost-effective platform with the ability to scale to our needs. We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SAS Grid Manager because the combination satisfied all of those requirements and more. As a result we've been able to markedly improve the analytic services we provide to our internal customers over our previous UNIX implementation."

- Pablo Nogueras
Director, Decision Science, Barclaycard

"Getting the best answer using the least resources with enough time to take action is really a constrained optimization problem--one which SAS and Redhat understand. Optimizing the analytic compute effort, compute cost, and timeliness of results lets you do your best with what you have. The TCO and performance of SAS Analytics on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a game changer that allows our customers to more effectively leverage the power of analytics within the confines of today's shrinking IT budgets."

Attributed to Anne Milley, SAS Sr. Director, Analytic Strategy

According to the Gartner EXP CIO report Leading in Times of Transition: The 2010 CIO Agenda, the top three CIO business priorities are business process improvement, reducing enterprise costs, and increasing the use of information/ analytics. Subscripition-based offerings from SAS and Red Hat can help deliver the technology you need to improve business processes and maintain a competitive edge, at prices you can afford. SAS is a leader in business analytics, helping companies unearth insights buried in information. And Red Hat's leading open-source operating system enables enterprise-class performance, flexibility, and cost savings over Window and UNIX RISC platforms. The analytical and budgetary needs of companies around the world are bringing Red Hat and SAS into close strategic alignment.

Move to Linux and save

If you looked at SAS 9.1 running on Linux, it's time to look again, and save. The ever-increasing performance and features in new x64 architectures continue to mitigate the need for UNIX RISC - the previous dominant platform for SAS Analytics. SAS 9.2 provides substantial performance improvements over SAS 9.1 on Linux. As a result, Linux has grown over 25 percent in the last year as a percentage of SAS deployments.

Companies turn to Red Hat for performance and reliability. Recent joint benchmarks prove the scalability of SAS Analytics running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a 64-core, 128 thread system with the latest Intel Xeon multi-core, multi-threaded processors. SAS Grid Computing is also growing significantly as a deployment option and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the most popular platform across SAS industries. This is no surprise as Linux has become the dominant grid platform, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux has 70 percent of the paid Linux market. In addition, SAS is investigating cloud technologies and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a premier foundational platform in cloud implementations.

Overview

Sharing to your advantage:

"SAS and Red Hat are long-time technology partners, and we look forward to expanding our strategic partnership," said Keith Collins, SAS Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. "Together, we are increasing customer value with the combination of our best-in-class products and the open-source Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform."
Keith Collins, SAS CTO


Red Hat was the first Linux operating system supported by SAS in 2002. Since then, both companies have leveraged synergies that ultimately work to your advantage.

  • Similar models. Subscription-based models from both companies help you respond to the pressure on your IT budget to do more with less, and offer world-class service and support. SAS and Red Hat consistently emerge as leaders in independent rankings based upon our ability to meet our customer's needs.
  • Geographic proximity. SAS global headquarters is in Cary, NC, only a few miles from Red Hat's headquarters in Raleigh, making it easier to collaborate on joint strategies, engineering, and projects such as reference configuration and benchmarks.
  • Shared markets. Both companies are strong contenders in financial services, manufacturing, communications, oil and gas, utilities, healthcare, government, education, etc., providing the expertise you need to implement the right solution to fit your needs and budget. Red Hat is rapidly ramping up joint activities with SAS.
  • Red Hat and SAS are sharing product road maps to ensure technology alignment.
  • Red Hat, SAS, and Intel have teamed to conduct benchmark of SAS running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which will result in the first reference architecture for SAS 9.2 on Linux.
  • Red Hat and SAS are developing reference architecture artifacts to help you evaluate, deploy, and tune SAS solutions on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  • Red Hat is mentoring SAS engineering on performance tuning and Linux file systems to achieve optimal performance and I/O throughput from SAS solutions running Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  • Red Hat uses SAS solutions as a regression test application to validate new releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Key Customer Benefits

Red Hat has been rated the #1 Enterprise Software vendor for customer value for by the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value Survey for the fifth time in six years. Red Hat also delivers value to joint SAS customers through compelling price/performance benefits.

Value you can count on

Lower TCO. Red Hat Enterprise Linux costs less to acquire when compared to both Microsoft Windows and UNIX. With Red Hat's subscription model, you pay as you go. Red Hat's value returns to you over the lifetime of the subscription in the form of updated features, security enhancements, and additional hardware and software support. You reduce your financial risk by having predictable IT costs. And that's just for the software. Because you can run and scale up or scale out even the largest mission-critical SAS solutions on industry standard x86 hardware, you reap unprecedented savings on hardware. You also get more functionality built into the operating system, so there's no need for expensive add-ons.

Reliability, service, and investment protection. Red Hat is ranked #1 among software companies in the 2009 CIO Insight Vendor Value. This is the fifth time in six years that Red Hat was named most valuable software vendor, topping the list for meeting vendor expectations for customer value, flexibility, and responsiveness. The Red Hat subscription model provides everything needed in one all-inclusive price. Multiple support services offer unlimited incidents and coverage up to 24x7 with one hour response time. And, Red Hat's robust ecosystem includes thousands of software and hardware vendors actively engaged in supporting and certifying Red Hat Enterprise Linux, often before other operating system platforms.

Security. Red Hat and SAS deliver highly secure technology platforms, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux achieving the highest security certification for Linux, Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL 4+).

Large Portfolio of Open Source Solutions. For SAS customers, Red Hat provides the most comprehensive portfolio of open source solutions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware platforms, leading management solutions, and full support for open source virtualization technologies including KVM and Xen. Additionally, Red Hat has the largest partner ecosystem of any Linux vendor, enabling SAS customers to choose best-of-breed solutions from a vast selection of ISVs, OEMs, systems integrators, and others.

Game changing performance and scalability. The ability to take advantage of performance enhancements in the latest processors and the ability to tune I/O and virtual memory, makes Red Hat Enterprise Linux an ideal platform for SAS Analytics. Industry benchmarks reflect the scalability and performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in both scale-up (vertical) and scale-out (grid) models1. Recent SAS 9.2 test results demonstrated excellent scalability for up to 64 cores (128 threads) on a single system.

Virtualization. Red Hat is a driving force behind the development of open source virtualization technology. Red Hat's approach to virtualization is easy to adopt, because it is delivered as an integral part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform.

Events

SAS Global Forum 2012 (Gold Sponsor)

April 22-25, 2011
Orlando, FL

Red Hat, SAS and HP joint webinar
SAS® Grid Manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and HP Converged Infrastructure

Customer Success Stories and References

SAS and Red Hat deliver value to joint customers across the world, for a complete listing please visit http://customers.press.redhat.com.

Bank of America Avoids Gridlock in Credit-Risk Scoring, Forecasts using SAS® on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Resources

Red Hat SAS Ecosystem Partners


Analytiks International
Red Hat Ready Partner delivering SAS consulting and deployments on Red Hat Enterprise Linux