NOTE: HTML 5 is in VA Hub Already!

Aside from comments about my SAS Enterprise Guide vs SAS Studio article, Metacoda's Michelle Homes (@HomesAtMetacoda) was quick to write a comment about my Flash & SAS Visual Analytics (VA) article and to point out that HTML5 is already an option for the VA Hub. Michelle said:

HTML 5 has been available as a configurable option in the hub in SAS VA 7.1 which was released in October 2014. Some information on this can be found at https://communities.sas.com/docs/DOC-8254

SAS VA 7.2 has a nice HTML 5 hub by default.

As a Session Recap from a SAS Live Q&A session states (along with nice comparison screenshots):

in Visual Analytics 7.1, the Home Page can be displayed using Flash or HTML5. Someone who has the Visual Analytics: Administration role can change the vah.client.ui.mode property in SAS Management Console. On the Plug-ins tab, navigate to Application Management --> Configuration Manager --> SAS Application Infrastructure --> Visual Analytics. Right-click the node and select Properties to access Advanced properties. The vah.client.ui.mode property specifies which mode of the Home Page to use. The default value, classic, specifies to use Flash to display the Home Page. The alternate value, modern, specifies to use HTML5 to display the Home Page. Note that the vah.client.ui.mode property is a site-wide setting that affects all users.

To learn more about SAS VA Mobile BI and HTML5, the TechTalks video of Himesh Patel (Sr Director, Research and Development) from this year's SAS Global Forum is a good place to start.

NOTE: SAS Mobile BI on Android

I see that SAS Mobile BI is now available for download from the Google Play store for Android-loving folk like myself. This is in addition to its earlier Apple incarnation. It's good to see SAS keeping to its promise of supporting multiple platforms.

It only appeared yesterday, so there's not been many downloads yet, but I'll follow its popularity with interest. It's a shame I don't have a SAS server I could test it from.

Whatever You Call It, It's All About People First

Achieve Intelligence (AI) just published its latest monthly news article. AI's monthly publications are all themed on building your Business Intelligence (BI) strategy. This month's publication is entitled "Capability Improvement – The Three P’s" and it describes the importance of people, process and plumbing in your strategy.

AI's monthly publications are long-overdue a mention in NOTE: because they are written by a team of people who have "got the T-shirt" in addition to going "there" and seeing "it"; plus, the publications are written in bite-sized chunks so you can take an actionable nugget of information from each monthly publication. Similar to NOTE:, you can visit the web site monthly, or you can request a convenient monthly email. I've not yet found a means to subscribe through RSS (many NOTE: readers use this approach).

Past publications from AI have included:

• Why do I need a Business Intelligence Strategy?
• How to Create a Business Intelligence Strategy
• Reasons for chaos: before a Business Intelligence Strategy
• Five Areas of Business Intelligence Strategy
• Stakeholder Management

AI's topic this month is one that I visited myself a couple of years ago. In "Keys to Success: People, Process, Technology", I wrote about how people are the most important factor in the success of any endeavour, closely followed by the business processes that the people use to achieve their goals. I refer to the final element as "technology", AI prefers "plumbing", but our message is the same... no project or strategy can focus on technology alone.

If you'd like to receive some advice and challenges about BI strategy each month, subscribe to AI. Better still, invite them to visit you and discuss your BI strategy. You do have a clearly-expressed BI strategy, don't you?...

NOTE: Looking Ahead to SAS Global Forum 2012 #sasgf12

Tomorrow morning (Saturday) I'll be leaving on a jet plane and heading to Orlando for SAS Global Forum 2012.

There's plenty to look forward to but some of the key interests for me include:

1) A new version of the Metacoda Security Plug-in. I look forward to getting a demo on the Metacoda stand in the exhibition area. The plug-in is a great way to manage, review, audit, troubleshoot and document metadata security

2) SAS's new in-memory data analytics tool: Visual Analytics

3) SAS's new proprietary mobile clients with presentation independent back-end. This effectively supercedes the stop-gap Roambi solution that SAS described at last year's SAS Global Forum

There's sure to be more. I can't wait.

Watch out for my regular posts (and tweets) from the conference.

BBC, on SAS

The BBC's Technology of Business site featured an interview with SAS's Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Keith Collins this week. The interview is themed on "big data" and it includes Keith's thoughts on the accelerating interest in understanding one's customers. Use of the internet as a channel for promoting and selling products and services means that even the smallest of organisations can reach large volumes of (potential) customers. All of these companies are potential beneficiaries of customer intelligence.

It's an interesting interview, and worthy of a read.

Keith finishes-off by talking of one or two mistakes he feels he's made, one of which was not realising how fast the market for tablet computers would develop. If you thought there a lot of mobile BI stuff at SAS Global Forum this year, next year will be even bigger!

NOTE: BI Adoption

I spotted a nice post from Lisa Pappas in the SAS Voices blog recently. It's entitled "Boost your BI adoption rates with mobility & collaboration, part 1" and I'm looking forward to the second (and final) part.

Lisa describes how recent developments in four key areas will help promote the adoption of BI by a much wider audience. Using Roambi to illustrate her points, Lisa talks us through Mobile BI and Collaboration in part 1; part 2 will cover Interactive Data Visualisation and Search.

The first article is brief (I guess the second will be too), but it's an interesting reminder of current BI trends.

NOTE: Mobile BI at SAS Global Forum 2011

I bravely forecast before attending SAS Global Forum 2011 that Mobile BI would the *the* hot topic. Well, I wouldn't say that it was hot, but it was fresh from the oven and very tempting. In fact, SAS had not one, not two, but three types of mobile computing solutions on show. Those three types were:

1. Roambi
2. SAS Mobile
3. Fit-to-task

In the opening session, Jim Davis (SAS Senior Vice President, and Chief Marketing Offer) showed a number of mobile apps on an iPad 2. He highlighted that SAS had created a new R&D organisation tasked solely with responsibility for User Interface (UI) development. In addition to using the iPad 2 to show a nice, generic BI dashboard app, Jim showed a social monitoring app for spotting sentiment in social streams (for handling cases of negative sentiment), plus a retail space app. All on iPad 2.

These last two examples are both fit-to-task mobile applications whereby the mobility of the device fits perfectly with the nature of the job, e.g. putting the right products, in the right quantity int he right place in each and every store.

The generic BI app looked like an instance of Roambi. SAS recently signed a partnership with Mellmo, the producers of Roambi. Roambi is one of the leading mobile BI solutions. When the SAS extensions are released in the next few weeks, Roambi will be able to read SAS metadata, such as web reports, and create Roambi content for consumption on mobile devices. In more detail, the Roambi solution breaks down into three components: Publisher, Server, and Viewer.

The Roambi server and publisher are able to read SAS metadata, apply Roambi templates to the content, and store the result. The viewer is then able to take the stored results and make them visible to users with any of the supported Roambi client apps. The advantages of Roambi are i) it is an industry standard that SAS customers may already be using to publish BI content from other vendors, ii) it is available in the next few weeks (for SAS 9.2), iii) quick "time-to-value" due to the re-use of existing SAS BI content.

The SAS Mobile solution is the third type of mobile computing solution for SAS. Not available until the end of the year, alongside SAS 9.3, SAS Mobile will offer SAS's "adaptive presentation " solution whereby any content can be consumed anywhere (almost!). SAS 9.3 will replace the Web Report Studio and BI Dashboard editors with one single, combined tool - The Designer. The new SAS Designer will the design and creation of reports of varying kinds, and will allow the user to specify the anticipated target devices. The Designer will create and store packages that contain content that is optimised for the target devices. A variety of SAS viewers will then be able to display the packages using the native look, feel and behaviour of the device.

So, in order to get SAS Mobile you'll need to upgrade to SAS 9.3. If you're already running SAS 9.2 then you can soon get Roambi without necessitating any upgrades.If you're currently running SAS 9.1 then you'll have to upgrade to get a mobile computing solution. SAS offer a metadata migration utility to take you from 9.1 to 9.2, and they'll offer a 9.2 to 9.3 option too. However, I didn't get any firm answer to the question of whether a 9.1 to 9.3 option will be available.

With any mobile solution, the issue of online versus offline is very important. The Roambi solution downloads all of the data that it requires. This means it can happily work offline, but also means the download can take a length of time. On the other hand, SAS intentions for the SAS Mobile solution are to provide some user control over what is downloaded.

Gartner estimate that 1/3 of all BI content will be consumed via a mobile device by 2013. That's a big shift from where we are today, but it's believable when you see enterprises buying into the technology so readily. The reasons are plain:

• Mobile computing offers faster/better decision making and is analogous to mobile email that Blackberry delivers
• Tablets are light and portable yet provide a big enough screen to be usable for "real work"
• Total cost of ownership (TCO) is lower than for laptops

Challenges such as security have been largely resolved by the provision of features such as:

• Email encryption
• Passcode locks
• The ability to remotely wipe the device if it is lost or stolen

So, Mobile computing wasn't hot this year. Maybe SAS Global Forum 2012 will see the fruition of all the developments I've listed above. I sure hope so, it's very exciting.

[See all of my posts regarding SAS Global Forum]

NOTE: Mobile BI

I dropped and broke my beloved HTC HD2 Windows Mobile smartphone just before Christmas. I loved its large 4.3" screen and its neat HTC Sense interface over the top of clunky Windows Mobile V6.5. I've replaced it with an LG Optimus One (P500). Why should this interest the SAS world? I'll tell you...

My sad telephonic experience has given me the opportunity to get some insight into a topic that I'm expecting to be hot at this year's SAS Global Forum. I'm talking about Mobile Business Intelligence. It sounds geeky but I'm convinced there's real business value and it'll be a hot topic in 2011.

I enjoyed the large screen on the HTC. I found it big enough to use the on-screen keyboard and to type emails without great inconvenience. It allowed me to view web sites perfectly adequately too. But it lacked support from developers and I was constantly frustrated by the launch of new apps for Apple's iOS and Google's Android, but not for Microsoft's Windows Mobile. So, when it broke I thought I'd take the plunge into the world of Android. Hence my purchase of the LG Optimus One.

I'm very pleased with the LG, and I love the availability and variety of apps (including TripIt to help me plan my trip to SAS Global Forum), but I do find the smaller 3.2" screen to be a frustration. I no longer find it so comfortable to write emails and browse the web.

As a newbie to the Android world, I've been keen to follow the developments of the Android tablets that have appeared over the last few months (first the Samsung, then the Motorola, and now everybody's jumping on the bandwagon). Given my recent experiences and frustrations, I can see how an Android tablet could be just what I need to keep in touch while I'm travelling.

I've never been a fan of Apple's expensive and locked-in approach to their products (though I do fully appreciate the gorgeous aesthetics of them). Hence I haven't given the iPad much attention. But I now see how the iPad and its cheaper, more-open Android cousins offer the mobile business person a fantastic tool for doing their job. Whether it's keeping in touch with colleagues and customers, having instant access to operational details like stock availability and product pricing, or being able to view strategic company information when you want and where you want, these tablets offer a convenience that conventional laptops and netbooks fail to deliver.

A lot of business intelligence (BI) vendors have released mobile products in order to meet the demand, firstly for the iPad but more recently for Android (and doubtless BlackBerry's upcoming PlayBook tablet will soon be supported too). BI vendors must provide their customers with the ability to design once and render anywhere; to support BI anywhere (desktop, browser, tablet, smartphone) and in any interface (dashboard, visual exploration, query, or Office). Leading industry analyst Howard Dresner recently published a study on the mobile BI market. Information Builders came out among the top contenders and chose to publish the study in full. Dresner concluded that "within two years a significant percentage of users will consume BI content exclusively on mobile devices".

SAS's recently signed partnership with MeLLmo Inc, creator of Roambi, one of the leading business apps for interactive mobile analytics, gives it the ability to deliver mobile SAS BI - albeit only for Apple iOS products at the moment. As I said earlier in this article, I expect to hear a lot about this partnership, and to see plenty of demos of what it can deliver, at SAS Global Forum. I'll be keen to not only look at the interface but to also understand the infrastructure that is required to allow people to work and move around transparently between office, mobile, online and offline modes.

However, I'll make one final point. Mobile BI is big and getting bigger, but there are plenty of other key developments in the industry that SAS must follow to retain their eminent position. Cloud-based delivery of services, and in-memory analytics are just two that I also hope to hear more about at SAS Global Forum.

Time to pack and find my passport...