At its virtual Build conference last month, Microsoft made many Azure-specific announcements, including the launching of Cloud for Healthcare, Cognitive Services and Bot Service enhancements, and more. Today, the tech giant has unveiled a new strategic partnership with U.S.-based analytics software developer SAS for further leverage the power of the cloud.
Specifically, both firms will work together to allow customers to run their SAS workloads on the cloud. In order to advance this purpose, SAS will be moving its industry solutions to Azure, choosing Microsoft as the preferred cloud provider for the SAS cloud. For Microsoft customers, this collaboration will mean additional value across industries such as health care, financial services, and more. Customers such as St. Louis-based health system Mercy have already begun the process of migrating their SAS analytic workloads to Azure.
Scott Guthrie, Microsoft Executive Vice President of Cloud and AI, commented on the benefits offered through this partnership, noting:
"Through this partnership, Microsoft and SAS will help our customers accelerate growth and find new ways to drive innovation with a broad set of SAS Analytics offerings on Microsoft Azure. SAS, with its recognized expertise in analytics, data science and machine learning, is a strategic partner for Microsoft, and together we will help customers across dozens of industries and horizontals address their most critical and complex analytical challenges."
SAS' cloud-native offerings like Viya will also be optimized to ensure that they can be seamlessly deployed on Azure. Analytics capabilities developed by the firm will be integrated within Azure and Dynamics 365, with new market-ready and natively-integrated, joint solutions planned to be built as well. Additional SAS products that follow this development model are set to be released later this year.
This partnership announcement arrives in conjunction with the Virtual SAS Global Forum 2020. Those interested in learning more details regarding the collaboration can sign up here for the event, with relevant information set to be revealed in the SAS Executive Welcome, which is scheduled for June 16, 11 a.m. ET/ 8 a.m. PT.
