SAS Data Management Reviews

The interface of the solution is great. You don't need to be an experienced analytics person to work with the product. Even new users can do all sorts of modeling on the data. 

The data-cleaning aspect of it is awesome. 

You can put together different data sets from different environments and different platforms. SAS Data Management takes a lot of data sets, and you can do any sort of analysis on them. It's very, very comprehensive.

The pricing of the solution needs to be improved. They need to work to make it more affordable.

I've been using the solution for two years.

The solution is very stable. We haven't faced any issues with glitches or bugs. We haven't had any crashes.

There are very few limitations to the scalability of the product. Organizations with hundreds of thousands of customers or millions of customers use this solution. It scales very well. The support is good.

We're very satisfied with technical support. SAS works very closely with its partners. When any issues come up, they're very quick to respond. You really can't run the products without their support, in any case. You have to rely on their expertise.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's very easy to implement everything.

Usually, SAS will directly give an organization all the deployment plans. You come up with the scope of the work together with them, you work together with them, and you typically have a project manager that oversees everything. It's just a very smooth deployment.

We implemented the solution with the assistance of SAS.

The solution is very expensive.

We're a SAS partner.

We don't use the solution ourselves but we implement it for customers.

We only work with enterprise-level organizations as they would be the only types of companies that could afford the solution.

I would highly recommend the solution to other organizations. It's a very solid platform. It's hard to knock it down.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

On-premises

I have always worked in data analysis, data warehousing and information services in the corporate environment and, more specifically, mostly in the insurance industry. I used to be a SAS programmer because I'm always interested in it. Even though I'm not using the product officially in the corporate environment. I use it personally.

I use the free cloud version. I use it when I work for the agriculture industry and I do their analysis for them. I like to use it for many data analysis tasks and working with business information.

At this point in my career it really just improves what I am able to do for my personal clients. That is because I am very familiar with the product and it does what I need it to do. I have the benefit of experience with the tool and it improves my services. 

I just use the main features of SAS (Statistical Analysis System). I use it to work with data from Excel and then go from SAS to Excel. It is very light usage really. I don't use the broader capabilities. There is probably 90% I haven't used at all.

Data analysis and analytics tools can always be improved. That could be to simplify or enhance the product. Technology is progressing very much in the area of analytics. I suppose the sky is the limit when it comes to improvement. There are all kinds of better ways of reading data, better methods of presenting data, better analytics — all of those things — new advancements come out every day.

Additional features that I'd like to see in the next release would be making a better, more graphical interface. More graphical ways of representing data as well. Today the graphic element of programs is a big thing. Why should I have to use something that is not pleasing and simple when I've got the opportunity to use something out there that offers me better graphical options and different options of graphic display?

I also have ideas for the programming side. I'd like to be able to more with the MDDBs (Multi-relational Databases) in the cloud, utilizing all the cloud features. You want to be able to have the information that you are analyzing available. If all the information you need is available in the cloud, people in different locations can look at it and you can help them to look at it in an analytical manner. So maybe instead of just showing them results at a high level that they may not be so interested in, they can click on a button or a tab or something else and navigate better to the data that interests them. The information opens up in a more customized way to their interests and concerns and then they read the analysis in the way that they want to see.

To some extent, you've already got all of that. But those are the features that can be mainly improved to give them greater power over how they drill into it. Then the same information is available all over, people are examining the same information and are on the same page even if they choose to view it in different ways.

I have been using the solution since before the first official stable release six years ago.

I think the product is very stable. I think it's a marvelous product. It is very widely used by many people and I never hear people complain. There are so many other options for data analysis coming up. Whether it's Oracle, or Microsoft, or Sigma Data Analysis — another German company — all these other companies have introduced their data analysis products. These are all competing with SAS at the moment. Maybe some will get better. But I like SAS because I know it. And when they see what other competing products do better, they can add features.

It is a very vast program and you only use what you need. As much as you can use it, it is as scalable as you want to make it. There are good options for making use of it from individuals to an enterprise solution. If that's the meaning of scalability, then it can grow with you. Also, I know they bring out new releases of the software which is scaling in even another way. 

I'm satisfied with the support I get from the company when I need it. Online support is very good. I don't have a department of people to turn to if I get stuck. So I go on to the internet or I go online and I ask a question. I get back answers from the SAS support without any trouble. I'm very happy with it.

I used to use Excel only but as I was working in corporations where they had better tools for analysis that were quicker and better, it made a lot of sense to learn them. I still use Excel a lot because it can do some things very well. These days I have more powerful options.

Most of the time, I do my own setups. A while ago we used it on the mainframe. I was employed in the corporate world for a long time. We have used it on PCs in the mid-range. Right now, for me, I use it either on a virtual machine or in the cloud. I have to go by my own instincts by outlining what is necessary. Sometimes technology just tells you what to do. I'm 72 already, so I'm on my way to not using it much anymore, but I still follow the changes.

The deployment takes different time depending on how it is deployed, but I am such an experienced person with it, I don't think it is ever hard. It lets me do the things I have practiced all these years and I can do analysis for people from where I am right here, via the internet.

I am an expert in this SAS Data Management tool. Many people and companies use it in South Africa. But I have been an expert in the SAS program for a long time and maybe am one to the most experienced with it. I do not really do installations anymore, but always did my own. Right now I am more prepared to do analysis for companies over the internet.

I find that their corporate price for licensing is very expensive. I don't pay because I'm using it free of charge on the cloud for personal use. But I know, if I want to buy, or if I want to have a version here, on-premises and installed on my desktop, then it is expensive.

I don't know the exact price, however as I haven't made any inquiries about that yet. When my needs change maybe I will have to.

Other people were in charge of choosing the products and options. I was not involved in that process, so I don't have much to compare it against. I'm only using this one product all the time for the analytics and supplement the use with Excel. I'm now at a stage where I got back to learning more about the other capabilities because of how they have improved. I'm not getting extra formal training or anything like that. But the other thing is that SAS has got everything and so much more than when I started to use it. Like, MDDBs and all of the additional capabilities. All of a sudden you have many new capabilities to learn and use. Now I am not a programmer and have much more power without expending that energy.

I think this is a great product. On a scale from one to ten when one is the worst and ten is the best, for me, it would have to be a ten. I have some ideas as to how it can be better, but it is a very good product.

Data quality and the great integration possibilities.

It's streamlined our vendor master-data approach. It has become more reliable and more efficient.

Native SAP integration or more efficient SAP is needed.

I've used it for three years.

System requirements could be clearer.

No, it is a very stable product.

No, however we spend time analyzing our system upfront.

Customer Service:

8/10.

Technical Support:

7/10.

We did, but nothing specifically for MDM.

It's straightforward and you can be up and running in a few days.

We used a mixed team.

It's less than two years.

Their software pricing offers the best value for money on the market.

Yes, we also looked at SAP MDM and Informatica.

Data integration is the difficult part of the implementation. The basic setup is quick and is very easy.

The main purpose for buying this product was to give our business users that have technical skills a tool where they can easily build jobs/queries against our DWH. The interface for building these jobs is very user friendly and the learning curve for using it is very good.

By having our business users using this product, they became more independent and the amount of requests that they issue for the technical team is considerably lower.

For the amount of features that we use, the licensing is expensive.

Although the interface is very user friendly, there are a few options that are hidden inside the jobs properties and the users have difficulty understanding and finding them. The user guide doesn’t provide all the information needed.

Another point is regarding the database connections. These connections must be independently set in each client and server. This type of definition should be centralized.

DataFlux dfPower Studio 8.2

DataFlux Data Integration Server 8.2

Deployment was very smooth. The only issue encountered was regarding the email configuration. The installation guide didn’t have much information and our firewall was blocking the mails.

No. After deploying the product and after an initial period of testing to find the correct configuration properties, everything runs smoothly.

• In the server, from time to time, depending of the type of job the users submit to the server, we have to increase the amount of memory in the server. However, we have a limited number of users that can deploy jobs to the server.
• The desktop client, when running a job, consumes resources of the client machine and of the database being accessed. This being said, the scalability depends of the user machine and database where the information is stored.
• Like many others tools that provide the same functionality, in order to perform the required analysis, the data must be transferred to the product and this step consumes time (network) and resources (memory and cpu). When the amount of data is very large (millions) the amount of time and resources is considerable high so the way to go is to analyze data samples and extrapolate from there.

Customer Service: After becoming a SAS Company the customer service has improved.Technical Support: From our experience, the technical support has room for improvement. There aren’t many experts using this tool and the knowledge base that we find online and in the SAS forums is very small.

Previously our business users would have to write complex SQL or issue requests to the technical team in order to get the information needed. They find it much easier using the Dataflux product to access the information stored in the database for the type of analyses they have to do on day to day basis.

The installation is very straightforward. Installing is not complex but the initial setup could take some time. There aren’t any guidelines or wizards that we can follow in order to find the best configuration based on infrastructure.

It was in-house. The vendor team was a proxy for getting support from DataFlux company.

SAS Integration and explore the standardization capabilities.

If they are looking for a profiling and data quality tool you should consider Dataflux. However you should do a trial first to understand which features are useful and if those compensate the costly licensing.

National Quality Knoledge Base
Matching features
QPI (Quality Performance Indicator) analysis approach

High performances in matching tool

ETL functions

Since 2012

Proprietary programming language

Not at all

No, high integration level with SAS

Customer Service:

High

Technical Support:

High

Informatica Powercenter
Lack of data quality governance features

Complex, as usual with SAS

The vendor team was from SAS, high level of expertise

High
Consider that, for Data Governance, the meaning of ROI may be Risk Of Inactions

IBM QualityStage

Data Governance needs specific tools, don't try to survive with user written codes

I’ve used this product in multiple ways. Initially, I integrated it with QAS address software to validate and standardize customer website registration data in real time, loading the cleansed customer data into Siebel CRM. I’ve used the data profiling reports to identify errors in ETL jobs and enterprise data warehouses. I’ve built business rule metrics that score ETL jobs in terms of data completeness and data accuracy between the business application data store and the enterprise data warehouse. All efforts have proved invaluable to the business user.

SAS Data Management Studio V 2.4

While the deployment is more complex now that it was 7 years ago, if you follow the detailed instructions from SAS regarding the software depot deployment, it is not difficult, and can be completed in 1-2 hours easily.

The server side component runs rock solid on Linux. The Windows client component is less stable, and may require a restart a few times a day, especially if installed on a PC with limited RAM and you are dealing with very large data stores. Since I’m one major release behind in this software, it’s possible these client stability issues have been corrected in the most recent release.

Very large data stores require a powerful server to run the data profiling reports for all of the rows in the database. My estimate for “very large” is a database >= 200 million records.

Customer Service:

When DataFlux was a standalone company, the customer service deserved an A+ rating. Now that it is a wholly owned subsidiary of SAS, and just one piece of a giant software conglomerate, I would give them a C+.

Technical Support:

Technical support is strong at resolving install and configuration issues of the client side tool. You will need to speak with a SAS DataFlux consultant to debug complex technical issues related to the data quality jobs you code, or server side problems.

I’m an independent DataFlux consultant, so I am “the vendor”. I’ve partnered with SAS consultants on implementations, as well as performed solo installations. SAS DataFlux consultants are top notch in their expertise of the tool and data. But they are not required to install successfully, just add a level of confidence.

The ROI can be very high in terms of improving the reliability and accuracy of data used in forecasting and marketing models (ex: customer data, sales data). You can also reduce storage costs; slow the need for hardware upgrades by using DataFlux to eliminate duplicate data. Even better, use DataFlux to audit your ETL and data warehouse efforts, insuring accurate reporting. CEOs and CIOs will drop $10M for a new ERP system installed by a big-4 consulting firm, and then balk at 5% of this cost to insure that the data stored in this complex and costly ERP system is not corrupt or full of duplicate data.

Yes, including Business Objects, IBM’s Infosphere, and Trillium.

Take the time to send a minimum of 3 of your most technical data architects to onsite training at SAS in Cary, North Carolina. Their facilities and teachers are excellent, and this training is of great benefit for your organization over the long term.

• In my previous employer we used the DataFlux suite of data quality, data integration and data governance solutions. It provided us cross-functional data management. • Great for ETL, CDC, data federation, RT data flow. Works with cloud and big data environments. • It enabled us to access and use data sources from across our enterprise in order to maintain a consistent set of policies for managing our data. • We had a single and unified view of our enterprise data by using its MDM component.

Costly. Not great for non-ETL use cases. Licensing model is not very flexible.

I like the fact that with DataFlux you can standardize and merge multiple records in a database such as people's names and locations. DataFlux in my opinion is an excellent high end solution for enterprise wide data management.