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SAS Architecture for


®

Business Analytics
SAS® delivers solution building blocks for empowering strategic
business decisions within your existing technology environment
SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

Table of Contents

Introduction......................................................................................................1
SAS® Technical Reference Model for Business Analytics .............................2
Data Management........................................................................................4
Analytics ......................................................................................................4
Reporting......................................................................................................5
Compute Services...........................................................................................6
Metadata Services...........................................................................................7
Security Services.............................................................................................8
Integration Services..........................................................................................8
Management Services.....................................................................................9
Workflow Services...........................................................................................9
Five Styles of Business Analytics, One SAS® Architecture...........................10
1) Classic Business Analytics.....................................................................10
2) Classic Business Analytics with Data Quality.........................................10
3) Business Analytics with Feedback Loops...............................................11
4) Real-Time Business Analytics................................................................11
5) Business Activity Monitoring..................................................................12
One SAS® Architecture................................................................................12
Conclusion .....................................................................................................13

i
SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

Content for this paper, SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics, was
provided by Diane Hatcher, Solutions Architect in the SAS Technology
Practice, Cary, NC.

ii
SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

Introduction

SAS has developed a business analytics architecture that can support many
different architectural styles and business uses. At the core of the business
analytics architecture are sourcing, discovery and sharing activities. Along with
proper data collection and verifiable data quality this leads to better analysis,
which means more compelling information can be shared in a variety of ways
with stakeholders, depending on the situational context.

The details of what these activities involve vary across organizations, within
organizations and even from day to day. Only SAS provides an architecture
flexible enough to support organization-specific requirements without sacrificing
performance while providing a platform that can evolve.

Architecture Planning
Business Analytics Source Discover Share
Activity
• Data capture • Query • Publishing
• Data cleansing • Statistical models • Interaction
WHAT Functionality • Data manipulations • Scoring • Integration
• Master data management • Visualization • Reusability
Provide consistent data Uncover opportunities Distribute actionable
WHY Value across the enterprise intelligence
• IT data management • Business decision makers • Business interfaces
WHERE Stakeholders • Operational systems • Decision support systems • Business processes
• Data access tools • SQL support • Content management
• Data quality algorithms • Analytical modeling • Web-based access
HOW Technology • Customer transformations • Custom development • “Push” techniques
• Job flow management • Interactivity • Services orientation
and scheduling

Figure 1. Architecture Planning Framework for Business Analytics

The diagram above (Figure 1) shows various attributes to consider when planning
business analytics architecture. All elements and capabilities may not be required
within each element, but the relevant ones should be linked and work together to
provide a seamless solution. As the usage of business analytics grows over time,
additional capabilities can be added.

SAS provides a single framework to meet all of your business analytics requirements,
without the need to continually install new components. The SAS architecture
provides a core set of capabilities that work together out of the box and can be
easily extended to add more functionality or integrated with other parts of your
IT infrastructure.

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

SAS® Technical Reference Model for Business Analytics

There are four key qualities that underlie and drive the SAS®9 architecture for
business analytics:

• Scalability – the ability to meet performance demands across the organization.


Different stakeholders or interlinked business processes will have different
resource usage characteristics. The SAS architecture has the flexibility to meet
those diverse requirements.

• Manageability – the ability to administer the SAS environment. As SAS becomes


more ingrained in your organization, it becomes critical to manage and monitor
usage to ensure optimal availability. SAS provides tools and techniques to
manage the environment, either independently or within an existing environment.

• Interoperability – the ability to use SAS capabilities from outside the SAS
environment. SAS provides an open architecture built to work with your existing
IT infrastructure (Figure 2).

ENTERPRISE CLIENTS

Custom Enterprise Web-Based Standards-


SharePoint Excel PowerPoint PDF Outlook Mobile
Applications Portals Application Based Apps

SAS®

ENTERPRISE DATA AND SYSTEMS


Enterprise Applications Operational Data
SAP Oracle Peoplesoft Siebel Teradata Netezza Sybase JDBC
DB2 HP Neoview SQL Server ODBC
Oracle AsterData MySQL OLEDB
Greenplum IMS-DL/1 PC Files

OPERATING SYSTEMS
z/OS AIX HP-UX Solaris Windows Linux

Figure 2. Interoperability with Existing IT Infrastructure

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

From supporting existing hardware and IT system standards to using virtually


any database management system to integrating with enterprise communication
channels, SAS has remained focused on delivering decision support wherever and
whenever needed.

• Reliability – the ability to deliver results at the expected time. SAS delivers
reliable results with powerful data access capabilities, industry-leading analytics
and diverse tools for sharing content via multiple channels. SAS delivers reliable
solutions, supporting multiple configurations to provide highly available systems.
Consistency of performance in both results and delivery are integral to the
SAS architecture.

Scalability

Infrastructure Blocks User Interfaces


Data Management
Analytics
Manageability

Reporting
Reliability

Framework Services

Interoperability

Figure 3. SAS®9 Technical Reference Model

Depicted above (Figure 3) is a high-level technical reference model for the SAS®9
architecture for business analytics. This represents a taxonomy of the core entities,
without stating a specific relationship between them.

The SAS architecture is made up of building blocks that encompass key


characteristics of a service-oriented architecture. They are reusable services
available across the suite of SAS tools and solutions to meet specific functionality
requirements. Reuse allows SAS to provide service consistency and common
integration points to fit within existing technology architecture.

Framework services make up the application platform that delivers common core
capabilities across the breadth of the SAS architecture. Data management, analytics
and reporting entities provide activity-specific building blocks for sourcing, discovery
and sharing. These blocks are a combination of targeted functionality and user
interfaces designed to meet the needs of the specific activity.

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

Data Management

• Do you have the need to access data across multiple databases and systems?

• Are you confident that your data is clean and consistent?

• Do you know what your data looks like?

The data management building block supports the business activity of sourcing.
This could include prebuilt, high-performance capabilities for connectivity, quality,
extraction, transformation and loading, migration, synchronization and federation
of data.

Data management means having a way to fully use all the data flowing into the
organization. This includes profiling capabilities and the ability to incorporate data
quality business rules across data sources and platforms. If you can automatically
integrate data quality into data integration processes, you can ensure that data is
current and accurate.

SAS® Data Management

Analytics

• Do you need industry-leading statistical algorithms and visualization techniques?

• Can you optimize and manage the portfolio of analytical models across
the enterprise?

The SAS Analytics building block supports discovery. The core of a business
analytics architecture is the framework support for an analytics engine, but it is how
that analytics engine is surfaced to the end user that determines its value.

It is important that technologies are in place to support a robust analytics


development process. This includes defining the business problem, developing
and deploying the appropriate models and tracking performance. Each of these
steps requires due diligence and appropriate methodologies to deliver results to the
organization. Analytics must be supported in a disciplined, managed environment to
provide the maximum value.

SAS® Analytics

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

Reporting

• Can all end users ask questions and get a usable answer?

• Do you have the ability to present the information in the appropriate format?

• Can you use multiple channels to share reports?

Reporting should not be treated as a standalone activity. It is part of a seamless


approach for creating and sharing intelligence. Reporting is more than querying. It
includes properly presenting the information and sharing the information across the
appropriate channels.

The reporting building block is critical for the business processes of preparing and
sharing information. This information must be presented in a way that is viable and
delivered to the right person at the right time. Only when this is done can information
become intelligence.

SAS® Reporting

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

SAS® Framework Services

Framework services (Figure 4) represent the application platform that delivers


standard capabilities across the breadth of the SAS Business Analytics architecture.
Data management, analytics and reporting address the components required for
the core activities around sourcing, discovery and preparation, but they use a single
infrastructure, representing the nervous system of the SAS architecture.
Compute

Metadata

Security

Integration

Management

Workflow

Framework Services

Figure 4. SAS Framework Services

These services are used by all SAS architecture building blocks to provide
consistency of service and performance.

Compute Services

• Does the engine you are using handle more than SQL processing?

• Can you create customized analytical models beyond what’s provided out
of the box?

• Can the analytics engine access data from all existing data warehouses
and systems?

At the heart of the SAS architecture are the compute services. Essentially, this is
the Base SAS software that has been the engine of SAS Analytics for more than
30 years. The SAS engine remains the power of the platform, executing queries and
models to deliver intelligence.

SAS has always been scalable vertically and horizontally, but we have also
engineered SAS to be scalable across the enterprise for all types of users requiring
both batch and interactive processing.

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

Feeding the engine is the SAS procedural language. This powerful language provides
the ability to analyze data using hundreds of analytical algorithms – including
simple queries, regressions, neural networks, time-based forecasting, scoring and
quantitative analytics. This is a huge advantage for users, because they are not
limited to analytics delivered through a predefined user interface. Every organization
is different, with different processes and different analytical needs. With user
interfaces that are familiar to most organizations, SAS can support 80 percent of
those needs. The remaining 20 percent can be customized to your organization to
provide unmatched analytics. With SAS software’s multivendor architecture (MVA),
SAS code can be written once and run on any supported operating system.

Analytics and data go hand in hand. The more data that is available, the better
the analytical results. One of SAS software’s core strengths has always been data
access, and SAS is continuing to innovate with high-speed analytical data storage
options, in-database processing support, and our commitment to continuous
evolution of analytics techniques and user interfaces.

Metadata Services

• Have you implemented a central metadata layer across the breadth of


analytic activities?

• Does the metadata encompass both technical metadata and business metadata?

Metadata services connect all the business processes in the platform – including
resource management, security and sharing of content.

Integrated metadata (information about data sources, how data is derived, business
rules and access authorizations) is crucial for producing accurate, consistent
information. SAS stores technical metadata and business metadata in an open,
centralized and integrated repository. Data changes only need to be documented
in one place. There are fewer systems to support and business users can count on
high-quality information. A single version of the truth is available to all. Better use of
staff time lowers the total cost of ownership for IT infrastructures.

SAS integrated metadata also provides an auditable, repeatable and secure


environment from which to derive business intelligence. Content can be organized
and controlled from a central location, ensuring that enterprise users can only view
the information they are allowed to see.

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

Security Services

SAS security services provide additional measures to complement your existing


security infrastructure and conform to your existing standards for authentication,
authorization and secure communications across the network.

User authentication can be on host-based authentication systems or use LDAP or


Active Directory mechanisms. Single sign-on is supported from desktop applications
running on Windows and through Web applications using trusted authentication.

Metadata-based authorizations can be used to add an additional layer of access


controls beyond what is supported on the file system. Authorizations to SAS-
controlled content and resources can be centrally managed via the metadata server.
The implementation is flexible to control both access to content as well as role-based
access to application functionality.

For additional network security, SAS supports a number of mechanisms for


encrypting network traffic. SAS/SECURE™ provides industry-standard encryption
algorithms, including Triple-DES (168-bit encryption) and AES (256-bit encryption).
These algorithms can be used to encrypt only credentials or all network traffic
between SAS clients and servers. For Web applications, secure socket layer (SSL)
is supported.

Integration Services

• Can business analytics activities and results be integrated with external


operating systems?

• Can custom applications be developed that leverage analytical capabilities to


address a specific business problem for your organization?

• Is it possible to surface analytical models to be used in existing


production environments?

Integration services consist of technology components that facilitate integration of


business analytics with other systems. The results of analytics can be used directly by
individuals or can be automated into systematic decision processes.

Integration services consist of technology components that facilitate SAS integration


with other systems – either by invoking SAS algorithms or SAS calls to an external
component. SAS algorithms can be surfaced across SAS itself, using the stored
process interfaces. This allows analytical modules to be reused across the SAS
architecture in an encapsulated manner – delivering consistent results. These stored
processes can also be defined as Web services, allowing external applications to
invoke SAS for real-time scoring or other analyses.

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

External systems can be operational systems or custom applications. SAS provides


a library of APIs to support access to SAS functionality from custom applications,
and provides an Eclipse-based development environment to streamline creation of
custom applications. Language interfaces allow SAS code to be easily integrated
with external systems – whether they’re based on other standards (e.g., PMML) or
other platforms (e.g., Java or .Net).

Management Services

Management services consist of technical components that monitor and optimize


the use of business analytics across the enterprise environment.

The SAS Business Analytics infrastructure is able to operate and integrate into
existing IT enterprise system management facilities such as:

• System monitoring for monitoring the health of the environment.

• Event management for assessing the status of applications via logging,


monitoring and implementing methods to correlate events, errors and warnings.

• System administration for the automation of start, stop and restart semantics.

Management services include a technical component that provides the ability


to log business analytics activity. The logs can be used to audit artifacts use,
track performance and monitor changes made to metadata security settings and
other content.

Workflow Services

Workflow services define the technical components supporting process


management. These components are used by SAS solutions to provide the ability
to define business rules, trigger events and send notifications when appropriate.
Notifications can be alerts via e-mail, invoking another process or triggering a
Web service.

Workflow services allow for extension of workflows for greater integration with
enterprise business processes. It is possible to generate multiple-level approval and
review processes. With standard APIs for accessing workflow status for integration
with business applications, analytics process flows become more manageable,
visible and documented.

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

Five Styles of Business Analytics, One SAS® Architecture

The SAS architecture is designed to be flexible enough to support the five styles of
business analytics that are used by all organizations. Each style has its own set of
architecture requirements. Multiple styles may be used at the same time within an
organization. Understanding these styles can help you assess what architecture
building blocks you should consider. For more details about these five styles of
business analytics, please read Architecture for Business Analytics: A Conceptual
Viewpoint, available at www.sas.com/reg/wp/corp/17871.

1) Classic Business Analytics

Classic business analytics is the basic process of data sourcing and may include the
creation of a data mart or warehouse, information discovery – via data exploration
or predictive analytics techniques – and sharing generated reports or information
at different levels of an organization. Traditional report-driven BI processes put
information into the hands of users, leaving them to interpret the situational context
and how it affects the business process.

What is changing is how the information is distributed. Business stakeholders want


information via e-mail, portals, dashboards and mobile devices. SAS Business
Intelligence solutions can provide dynamic access to information, regardless of the
interface, with the ability to refine questions, drill into more detail or visualize in a
different manner.

2) Classic Business Analytics with Data Quality

In many ways this style is similar to classic business analytics except that it
recognizes the need to cleanse and standardize the sourced data, so it integrates
data quality into the data sourcing process. This could be critical to your organization
to improve trust in the data or to meet regulatory requirements.

SAS Enterprise Data Integration and DataFlux® dfPower® Studio provide prebuilt
transformations and data quality algorithms to build data warehouses with
standardized data. SAS can help you manage the entire data life cycle to ensure
that your data is clean, relevant and can be acted upon.

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

3) Business Analytics with Feedback Loops

This style supports cyclical business processes with a defined time window, where
specific information is needed to finalize decisions. For example, you might want
to provide specific recommendations into a procurement workflow. On a regular
schedule, you may need to forecast sales to determine what you need to order to
replenish your inventory. Data is extracted and cleansed using SAS Data Integration
Studio, analyzed using advanced forecasting techniques with SAS Forecast Studio,
and then specific information on recommended purchase amounts is written back
to the operational system via message queues. Procurement system users can then
access the recommendations to better guide their decisions.

4) Real-Time Business Analytics

There are instances when it is unknown exactly when a specific service might need
to be executed to gather information because it is triggered when specific behavior
is observed. These situations benefit from analytical enrichment by combining both
contextual and historical data with very quick responses. This leads to a need for
real-time business analytics.

This style of business analytics reflects the need to trigger analytics or data collection
and delivery in real time from an operational application. Contextual data is combined
with existing historical data and analyzed. The results are sent back to the original
touch point for a person to make a decision or for business rules to drive basic,
automated decision making. One example is the real-time scoring of customers in a
bank to see if they qualify for a loan. SAS® Enterprise Miner™ scoring models can be
called via Web services, and the resulting score can be sent back via another Web
service to the calling application to be used in the loan application process.

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

5) Business Activity Monitoring

Automated decision making is becoming the standard with technology-dependent


operations, when human monitoring and decision making is generally not possible or
timely. This requires monitoring key information, defining business rules and triggering
alerts or other events that can drive downstream action. A services-oriented
architecture is needed to provide sourcing, discovery and sharing to deploy business
analytics directly into operational systems. SAS solutions, such as SAS Enterprise
GRC, have begun to take advantage of workflow capabilities in the SAS application
platform to support activity monitoring capabilities.

One SAS® Architecture

The SAS architecture is unique because it supports all five styles of business
analytics from one deployment. Because of the service-oriented approach,
capabilities are encapsulated, extended and integrated to deliver the required
business analytics. SAS architecture building blocks work together out of the
box, supporting the ability to deploy some solution blocks first and add additional
modules later.

The SAS application platform – SAS framework services – allows the infrastructure
of the SAS architecture to be managed separately but delivered as part of any SAS
solution. This provides flexibility in delivering targeted building blocks to support your
business analytics activities. There is no need to reinvent the functionality provided by
the framework services when deploying different SAS solutions.

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SAS® Architecture for Business Analytics

Conclusion

Regardless of the size, industry or goals of your organization, SAS provides an


architecture for business analytics that can meet your needs today and into the
future. Key activities of sourcing the data, discovering what the data is telling you and
sharing the information are supported with an integrated application platform and
flexible building blocks. The SAS architecture building blocks are linked together to
deliver consistent results.

The success of your business analytics architecture depends on having:

• The appropriate building blocks to deliver a business analytics architecture.

• The analytical capabilities you need to support the best decision making.

• A means to integrate analytic activities to maximize their value to


your organization.

The SAS Business Analytics infrastructure provides an effective way to:

• Manage the growing appetite for intelligence.

• Gain greater ROI from your existing IT investments.

• Support sustainable growth through innovative use of technology and information.

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