SAS Innovate 2025 is imminent, and the annual conference promises to provide more detail than ever on what makes the firm a strong contender for enterprises looking to unlock the value of their data.
SAS has promised attendees an event that’s ‘all-in on AI’ – and not just because Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft, is due to give a virtual address. SAS now boasts a steadily expanding list of AI offerings, most notably its developer-focused Viya, Viya Workbench, and App Factory offerings.
More detail on these and the possibility of updates on unreleased products and ongoing business decisions are highly likely, especially as SAS has confirmed it will not be running Innovate’s sister event SAS Explore this year.
ITPro will be providing live coverage from SAS Innovate 2025 held in Orlando, Florida. Ahead of the event, here are our predictions for the themes that will play the biggest role.
SAS pushes ahead with pragmatic AI
For many years, SAS has been moving steadily toward AI saturation, encouraging customers to adopt its cloud native AI and analytics platform, SAS Viya. The platform covers end-to-end AI model development and deployment, with an aim to empower data scientists.
In 2023, the firm also announced Viya Workbench, a cloud-based coding environment through which developers can create AI and machine learning (ML) models in the SAS language or Python.
As enterprises look for more data on which to train – or more importantly – fine-tune and ground an AI model, synthetic data is increasingly filling this role. For firms in controlled sectors such as finance or healthcare, synthetic data also provides a lifeline by allowing organizations to generate realistic datasets that don’t contain any real, sensitive information.
Last year, SAS made a stride into this market with the private preview of SAS Data Maker, its synthetic data platform. At time of announcement, the firm promised organizations a low or no code path to producing synthetic data
It wouldn’t be too much to expect an update on this in this year’s event, particularly in light of a recent SAS acquisition.
In November 2024, SAS acquired the synthetic data firm Hazy, a UK startup that won multiple industry prizes in its field and claimed to be “first company to take synthetic data to market as a viable enterprise product”.
At the time, SAS stated that Hazy’s technology would be integrated into Data Maker, improving the product, and committed to expanding access to the product in 2025. With all that said, it’s highly likely that SAS Innovate will provide a platform for new announcements on Data Maker and more detail on the exact breakthroughs achieved via the acquisition.
A greater focus on predictive analytics is also expected, particularly with regard to SAS’ existing offerings to detect fraud and business risk.
Though hype continues to rage on for generative AI products and announcements, reliable predictive analytics based on traditional machine learning and statistical models still plays an important role for enterprises.
Indeed, as leaders still raise concerns about generative AI hallucinations, there’s a case for better understanding of when to use frontier AI models and when to fall back on tried-and-tested methods.
Given its role as one of the formative companies in the field of statistics and analytics software, SAS can make a strong argument for knowing the best direction to chart when it comes to unlocking valuable data insights for business.
The data veteran can lean into its 48 (going on 49) years of experience to sell its approach to AI as the considered, seasoned route to adoption and maturity.
An IPO update
It’s not guaranteed, but it seems likely that SAS will give attendees at SAS Innovate 2025 an update on its preparations for an initial public offering (IPO).
The plans were first announced in 2021 with a goal of going public by 2024, but Jim Goodnight, CEO at SAS, later stated the plans would not be realized until 2025, as reported by Techzine.
Just prior to the event, SAS promoted long-time employee Gavin Day to the role of COO, with Axios reporting Day would explicitly guide the firm through its route to IPO.
It’s the first major step toward IPO that employees and customers alike have seen in some years and could be the first significant sign that 2025 is the year it happens after all. Whether or not SAS chooses to make an announcement on its progress at the event, attendees – not least the assembled media – are sure to put pressure on executives to give some update.
SAS’ path to IPO has been one of steadfast belief in its value, as seen in the 2021 reports that the firm turned down a $15 to $20 billion acquisition by Broadcom. With its confident pivot into AI readiness, SAS seems confident in its continued competitiveness, as it nears a half-century of operations.
ITPro’s Rory Bathgate will be providing live, on the ground coverage of SAS Innovate 2025. Keep up to date with all the latest news, updates, and announcements via our live blog.
