SAS has announced the newest version of SAS Viya, bringing more functionality around analytics for the cloud with artificial intelligence (AI). Available late 2020, SAS Viya 4 aims to simplify how AI and machine learning is embedded into decisions.

It brings a reimagined cloud-native architecture and the availability of interactive or programming interfaces to enable SAS customers to use the solution without knowledge of programming language or data silos.

Automated data preparation, machine learning (AutoML) and model deployment improve the productivity of data science resources and expand AI capabilities, SAS states.

Results are explained in easy-to-understand terms. With a renewed focus on APIs, SAS Viya 4 enables application developers to collaborate with data science teams.

These capabilities allow customers to acquire and consume enterprise-scale analytics in an efficient way, using only the AI services they need.

In addition, SAS Viya 4 uses a continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD) process that allows customers to choose their release intervals, so they gain access to the latest product innovations the moment they're ready or can incorporate updates into their own change-management schedules.

The container-based architecture, orchestrated by Kubernetes, provides portability across different cloud environments, including Azure, Google, AWS and OpenShift.

For greater analytics capabilities, SAS Viya 4 simplifies model deployment and offers a central location to monitor and manage the performance of all analytic models.

As AI and machine learning become more widespread, SAS Viya 4 centralises the management of all open source and SAS models, lineage and templates, giving full visibility and control over all modelling activities, the company states.

Furthermore, SAS Viya 4's architecture allows customers to make the most of their analytics investment via software as a service (SaaS) from the SAS Cloud, public or private cloud provider.

SAS COO and CTO Oliver Schabenberger says, “This release marks an aggressive and innovative step for the SAS platform and for our customers. Organisations are asking to fuel their digital transformation with agility, speed, automation, intelligence and continuity.

“Those are the attributes of SAS Viya 4 - cloud-native advanced analytics and AI for users of all skill levels, turning business intelligence into intelligent business in the cloud.

IDC group vice president of analytics and information management Dan Vesset says, “Enterprises are implementing major changes to their data and analytics technology driven by cloud-native architecture.

“SAS Viya enables a flexible and efficient way to execute data and analytics workloads within container- and microservices-enabled architecture. Organisations can decouple the analytics from the environments in which they run to scale-up services quickly and meet decisioning needs in a much more agile fashion.

This release underscores SAS' commitment to helping organisations transform data into intelligence. The cloud-native SAS Viya is one outcome of SAS' $1 billion investment in AI.

The announcement is also in conjunction with Virtual SAS Global Forum 2020, which is being held virtually due to COVID-19.