Microsoft partners with analytics firm SAS to help customers accelerate growth

Microsoft has partnered with enterprise data management and analytics company SAS to enable customers to address complex analytical challenges and foster innovation. 

Under the partnership, SAS analytical products and industry solutions will be migrated to Microsoft Azure, which will bring added value to the Redmond, Washington headquartered technology giant’s customers across health care and financial services industries, as per a statement. SAS, on the other hand, will use Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 to power its internal operations.

“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,” Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) at Microsoft, said. “SAS, with its recognized expertise in analytics, data science and machine learning, is a strategic partner for Microsoft.”

The collaboration builds on SAS integrations across Microsoft’s cloud solutions for Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform, and helps further democratise AI and analytics, the statement said.

“Partnering with Microsoft gives customers a more seamless path to the cloud that provides faster, more powerful and easier access to SAS solutions and enables trusted decisions with analytics that everyone – regardless of skill level – can understand,” Oliver Schabenberger, CTO and COO of Cary, North Carolina-based SAS, said.

The companies will also roll out more SAS products and solutions later this year, the statement said.

Microsoft has seen several developments in the past month. 

Earlier today, the company announced that it has added new features to its Teams for Education platform to prepare students and teachers for new remote and hybrid learning formats in the upcoming school year. 

At the beginning of the week, it partnered with Wipro and Citrix to help enterprises maintain business continuity in a post Covid-19 world. 

Its corporate venture capital investment arm M12 also opened its first India office in Bengaluru to scour for opportunities in the local startup ecosystem. 

In the first week of the month, the technology company rolled out a programme to boost the growth of agritech startups in India by helping companies build industry-specific solutions, scale and grow with access to deep technology, business and marketing resources.