CARY – Oliver Schabenberger, to use a military term embraced by industry, is “dual hatted.” In other words, two crucial roles at the same time. And as chief operating officer as well as chief technology officer at SAS, he serves as No. 2 to CEO and co-founder Jim Goodnight. So no one other than Goodnight has a better hands-on, inside view of the 2018 landscape and beyond for the global software firm that is one of the world’s biggest big data juggernauts with an industry-leading emphasis on analytics. And a big part of that future is the Internet of Things as SAS moves to create a division focusing on IoT, which is transforming tech around the world and is forecast as a multi-trillion dollar opportunity by Cisco as well as other firms.

In a Q&A with WRAL Tech Wire, Schabenberger, who was promoted to the COO in 2017 after being selected as CTO the previous year, talks about the future and several key issues facing the company. A thought leader in artificial intelligence, he also has led Research and Development Division at SAS. The company disclosed 26 percent of its revenues in R&D in 2017 (much higher than the industry average, Goodnight points out often with great pride), and Schabenberger talks about investments going forward.  The interview came as SAS disclosed a 42nd consecutive year of revenue growth.

Our Q&A:

Is SAS mulling acquisition opportunities as demand for analytics products, services continues to grow?

Some software vendors make acquisitions to buy customers, revenue and market share. SAS only looks to acquire industry domain or technology expertise that allows us to expand into new markets.

We have the technology necessary to handle industry’s toughest issues and work proactively to build out capability ahead of the curve – not merely reacting to current hot spots. We are open to opportunities that fit this focus.

Has SAS put in place/updated succession planning?

SAS founder and CEO Jim Goodnight cares deeply about the long-term success of customers. Everything he and his senior leadership team do is geared toward providing what customers need.

Dr. Goodnight remains at the helm of SAS.  With his track record of successful planning and management, customers can rest assured that there is a succession plan in place that ensures SAS will continue to support customers.

 

Looking to 2018, what do you see as the big drivers?

SAS will continue investing in core areas, including analytics, data management, customer intelligence, risk management, fraud and security intelligence, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The company sees incredible growth opportunity in IoT, cloud, and expansion into mid-markets.

Where are the best growth opportunities?

Last year, SAS revenue associated with IoT grew by 60 percent. Industry analyst firm IDC estimates the size of the analytics market in IoT will grow to over $23 billion by 2020.

Capitalizing on that, SAS has created an IoT division combining R&D, marketing, product management and channel sales expertise that will continue SAS’ focus on providing edge analytics that add great value to customers’ IoT investments.

A press release will be going out about this tomorrow, with added details.

Does SAS see opportunities for growth in emerging technology such as virtual reality or augmented reality?

Augmented reality is another visualization environment in which analytics can be surfaced. Of course we are interested in all technologies that can help deliver and display analytic insights, including augmented reality.

In fact, we just featured augmented reality at the National Retail Federation expo earlier this month.

What are SAS’ latest initiatives regarding artificial intelligence? Will we see SAS AI-controlled or augmented analytics products designed to improve forecasting, etc.? 

Tapping into the latest deep learning algorithms, SAS will continue heavy investment in embedding artificial intelligence across the SAS portfolio. SAS enhanced the artificial intelligence portfolio with new product releases in machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing. A focus to make machine learning easy to use and provide quick time to value was well received by SAS customers.

We have plans for a Center of Excellence to help SAS customers understand and apply artificial intelligence in ways that can transform their businesses and the world around us. We see great synergies in combining classical methods of advanced analytics with modern methods based on machine learning and deep learning. This will drive accuracy and performance of analytics.

What do new GDPR data standards in Europe mean for a) SAS as a company – changes you have to make and b) for SAS clients, including those based in US – how is SAS moving to meet this opportunity? 

Although the general data protection rule (GDPR) applies to the data of residents of the European Union, the reach of the regulation is worldwide. Organizations that serve customers in the EU or data that will transfer through the EU must comply with the regulation or face steep fines.

Transparency across data security, privacy, quality and lineage is critical for businesses to comply and maintain customer trust. SAS is preparing to meet these requirements by the regulation timeline in May.

We are also offering SAS for Personal Data Protection to help our customers operate within the requirements of GDPR.

 What opportunities does SAS see in blockchain technology? This seems to be a big opportunity for improving supply chain management and inventory. Please explain. How can SAS capitalize?

Blockchain-based technologies have the potential to disrupt many industries, removing middle layers and impacting centralized structures. Many existing technologies, such as payment systems, are not broken enough to be replaced wholesale by a new technology that would require operating both systems side-by-side for some time.

I therefore see the immediate opportunities of blockchain technology in new application spaces. For example, managing digital rights and assets, new forms of micro-payment systems, and smart contracts.

A particularly interesting combination is that of blockchain with the Internet of Things (IoT).

From an analytics perspective, blockchain is a data infrastructure: we can push analytics inside the data structure, extract the information in the chain and apply analytics, and embed analytics as part of smart contracts. Also, streaming analytics can be applied before blocks are added to the chain.