I’m not going to disclosure company confidential information but that was a lot of good things shown and discussed at the town hall.
So much for all your past x% growth on a small amount is still a small amount commentaries related to Viya.
Ok now discount everything that was said and tear into the demos as subpar engineers. Go.
Burn, baby burn!
Isn't WPS and other "SAS clones" already taking out some of the lower end of the market? Then there are progressively better conversion tools/AI to migrate SAS to open source Python libraries, etc. and plenty of humans looking to do this work in a depressed tech employment environment.
Seems like a combination of migrating high value customers to Viya and at the same time building a new niche products on the Viya architecture is a good play, no?
No matter what occurs there needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking about SAS culturally and employee head count because one way or the other this is going to change significantly in the coming years.
leaner and meaner, and also with a new plan. but solving the innovator's dilemma is almost never achieved. doing what you should (serve the higher end customers well ) allows for the disruption to take over from the low end. not serving those customers that currently pay well in favor of serving the low end with low or no profits also does not make sense for an incumbent with a strong existing business to protect. then if you make something "better", the market has already shifted to things that are "better" but built on the disruption that has taken over as the new standard. there then isn't much demand for the "better" version of your once high end thing.
@g7 “In your opinion... which I do not share.”
Obviously in my opinion. Why would I be posting someone else’s opinion?
Didn’t ask you to share it.
Sadly, and I take zero joy and saying this but significant layoffs may (will?) be necessary to not only reduce expenses but to "right size" company SAS so that a much more focused and profitable set of initiatives can be pursued atop the Viya platform.
This sould include a very focused effort to provide the necessary compatibility and move key customers from SAS9 to Viya.
SAS must get "leaner and meaner" if it intends to survive long-term.
“Saslight” - verb. To manipulate (someone) using psychological methods into questioning their own sanity, memory, or powers of reasoning.
In some cultures, this is accomplished using toxic positivity, denying your perceptions of reality, and by obscuring measures of health and performance.
I wish I believed the happy talk. But for Viya revenues to take off, after growing so slowly in its first 10 years, there must be a catalyst.
Nvidia has enjoyed explosive growth, starting three years ago. The Transformer research breakthrough was its catalyst. I see no such catalyst for Viya.
I can believe in Viya’s continued slow growth, while SAS9 slowly declines. But if the one were balancing the other, we would not have layoffs.
In your opinion... which I do not share.
Here's an AI summary of what you mentioned:
11
Let's talk about Microservices - SAS Users
SAS Viya's microservices offer independent scalability, updates, and resilience (cloud-native, containerized) compared to SAS 9's monolithic, interdependent services (Windows Services/Daemons), while Viya's backing store involves modern databases (PostgreSQL, CAS metadata) and in-memory CAS, replacing SAS 9's older metadata/LASR servers for more flexible, distributed data access via Caslibs, enabling cloud-friendly, open-API analytics.
Here's a breakdown of the differences:
Microservices & Architecture
SAS 9: Monolithic, server-centric architecture with interdependent Windows Services or Linux Daemons; changes often required full restarts.
SAS Viya: Microservices architecture (loosely coupled, containerized); services (e.g., for security, reporting, CAS access) are self-contained, allowing individual management, updates, and scaling without affecting the whole platform.
Flexibility: Viya's design is more elastic, scalable, and cloud-friendly, using modern tools like Ansible for deployment.
Backing Store & Data Access
SAS 9: Metadata Server governed access; data accessed via LIBNAMEs (SAS datasets, databases).
SAS Viya:
CAS (Cloud Analytics Services): Replaces LASR, provides a distributed, in-memory analytic engine for fast processing.
Caslibs: Server-side data access via Caslibs (connecting to files, databases), enabling data processing on the CAS server.
Databases: Uses modern databases like PostgreSQL for metadata and configuration, alongside CAS.
Data Handling & Processing
SAS 9: Traditional DATA Step, with data pulled into memory or processed in-database via SAS/ACCESS.
SAS Viya: Leverages CAS for multi-threaded, in-memory processing, including for DATA Steps (with some syntax differences for parallelism).
Key Advantages of Viya
Independence: Start/stop/update services individually.
Scalability: Elastic, cloud-native design.
Openness: REST-based interfaces, supports Python, R, Lua, Java.
Resilience: CAS worker nodes and CAS sessions are independent; optional CAS controller backup for fault tolerance.
In essence, Viya shifts from a tightly coupled, server-based SAS 9 model to a flexible, cloud-native, API-driven microservices ecosystem for better performance, scalability, and easier management in modern IT environments.
@f1 yes
Although no longer at SAS, having done extensive design and development work significant architectural components in Viya, I am highly suspicious of this rumor.
There is a major impedance mismatch in the microservices and corresponding backing data store between SAS9 and Viya. And that's just one of the significant areas that would impact such a decision.
Anything is possible but such a move is highly doubtful.
I’m sure all of us who left wish that we could help. But we left because we tried and could not help.
I’ve heard a different rumor: that SAS realizes that Viya has not increased revenues, and is actively back-porting the best features of Viya to SAS9. Can anyone confirm?
"that was a lot of good things shown and discussed at the town hall."
Was there any talk of when these "good things" would move the revenue needle?
“We settled for a baby’s morsel in a few of those areas when we could have had a grownup’s slice of each.”
That required having grownups. I saw very few in my time. Loads of children grown tall, but few adults.
@dh OP here. All true and well said.
@ca English literacy is a thing of the past in the age of mobile devices. Keep up.
Language has one purpose. If it accomplishes that purpose it is irrelevant what the language police think. Keep on policing though.
"A growing bureaucracy and bloated management hierarchy contributed to a culture that could not disrupt itself or innovate fast enough to significantly capture new opportunities..."
IMHO, constantly shifting management priorities did not help and greatly contributed to the slow rate of progress.
@dh I observed this also; I think we all did. A well-run organization doesn't need C players, but it does need B’s to follow the A’s.
But for the B's to follow, the A’s must be in leadership positions.
SAS puts not only B’s but C’s in leadership positions. That’s been the root of our problems for decades. SAS still has plenty of A’s in the organization, but the organization is not based on merit.
I was no fan of the Big German, but he was clearly frustrated by people who did not share his intelligence or work ethic. If he had been a perfect leader, it would have made no difference, as long as this core problem went unaddressed.
I was in no rush to ,own the haters,! When I gotos that event, it’s a heddy experience. I prepear with huffing and top it off with that punch they give. It’s my favorite flavor coolaid.
Dont you insult the work my people did. We dont need to see sales numbers or baked off winds to know that we are the real winners here.
Spent ~2002 to ~2018 directly observing areas of mediocrity within R&D — management and devs/testers — while simultaneously working with some of SAS’ best and brightest. Notwithstanding, SAS always and still has many brilliant engineers/developers along with some really good managers and executives.
A big problem was the noise created by lower B to C grade employees who often “coasted through SASLife” and kept the status quo alive and well. This was a significant obstacle for those laboring to create a clear signal for forward progress.
A growing bureaucracy and bloated management hierarchy contributed to a culture that could not disrupt itself or innovate fast enough to significantly capture new opportunities, provided by seismic paradigm shifts in cloud computing, “big data”, early large scale ML, massive Linux proliferation, open source, etc. We settled for a baby’s morsel in a few of those areas when we could of had a grownup’s slice of each.
Our thinking was too small and often limited to “how can we make a subset of these technologies fit with the SAS language and data ETL model.” We settled for a few $100m when it should have been a few $billion.
I’m not going to disclosure company confidential information ...
"I'm not going to disclose company confidential information ..."
... but that was a lot of good things shown and discussed at the town hall.
"... but there were a lot of good things shown and discussed at the town hall."
It seems, in your haste to rush home and post on TheLayoff to "own the haters", that you left basic English literacy at the office.
@b7 incorrect. And it is the uninformed opinion expressed by so many here.
@as "a reasonable scenario is a substantially scaled down company"
This, I believe.
"... and tear into the demos as subpar engineers."
Funny. That's the same attitude expressed by those in management. You must be a manager!
The Viya plantform will prevail as the future of SAS until and unless a hard choice is made to develop a new platform architecture. Otherwise, newinnovative software components and products will be delivered within Viya.
SAS9 is a slowly setting sun still fueling the SAS renewable machine. As this slowly declines, a reasonable scenario is a substantially scaled down company dedicated to specialized products built within Viya.
Time will tell. The founders really don't have to care because they and theirs possess elite wealth without SAS ever having to sell or IPO.
@a6 You clearly weren’t there. Or weren’t invited LOL.
X% growth on a small amount is still a small amount.
Thank goodness that the Art Department, which is safe, produced visuals that wowed you. They hired them for that. Mission accomplished.
But as the fictional character Jerry McGuire once screamed “SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!”