… prove me wrong!
SAS Viya IS SAS — it has a Compute Server that runs traditional Datastep, PROCs, the Macro facility, etc. This being the case, most SAS customers CAN run their SAS9 code successfully in Viya.
So, why all the Viya hate here? SAS is strongly on the side of making Viya succeed!
“Many highly competent true R&D Principal Devs are parked behind ineffective managers.”
For most of its history, this was all the SAS business model required. SAS managers were often sycophants who lacked technical skills. Some lacked managerial skills. But they were competent to maintain a revenue stream that others had created.
They were not competent to create new revenue streams.
Many of them felt insecure — for good reason — so were threatened when subordinates suggested new ideas. They discouraged new ideas and thus stifled innovation.
This old business model worked, as long as the SAS revenue stream faced no significant competition. It doesn’t work anymore.
@10t Company Man largely endorses this message
@105 … TRUTH — part of the problem is many highly competent true R&D Principal Devs are parked behind ineffective managers, who themselves are technically shallow, or gave up learning years ago. In some tech companies Principals can only report to true Director level or above.
Bonafide Principals should be leading the architectural and tactical design issues, not justifying themselves to bureaucrats. SAS needs to squash the management hierarchy, rightly staff for industry standard technical competencies, give Agile the boot, and move forward.
Viya has a solid framework, it just needs to be expertly recast and doing so requires top talent.
Viya has the potential to be exactly what the company needs.
The main issues I see are:
we need to either fix the footprint problem, or get rid of the platform devs who have been incapable of delivering on multitenancy. Instances need to be shared or small enough that it's moot.
a lack of meaningful elasticity - sounds like the point above, but it's not; the platform needs to scale with load. Both in and out.
We need to make dealing with volume easier. Both in maintenance and delivery. SAS needs a real ops and SRE program. And it can't be a rube-goldberg ticket-generating machine like CIS.
engineering needs to get over themselves. I've scarcely seen so many arrogant, yet mediocre, developers as I have at SAS. We have principal devs who can't describe the basics of networking, tls, kubernetes, *nix systems, etc.
@kb ditto
@jo
Thank you for subtly illustrating the previous point.
@j0 “ Translations for the rest of us: Y’all are id iots.”
Not all. But some.
So many of these conversations degenerate into dismissive statements and ad hominem arguments.
I think the OP’s question was sincere, and it’s true that SAS is trying to make Viya succeed.
But Viya is in its 10th year, and revenues are still flat.
Flat revenues are failure. Flat revenues don’t grow with inflation, while expenses do.
That will require more cost-cutting: lower salaries, reduced benefits, attrition, buyouts, and layoffs.
It’s not that we hate Viya. It’s just that we can all do the math.
Are you saying that all people are equal on the intelligence front?
Every human capability is normally distributed.
Translations for the rest of us: Y’all are id iots.
@fk
I didn’t say that at all.
Every human capability is normally distributed.
I won’t add any insults or trite dismissive-isms beyond that statement.
@ey Are you saying that all people are equal on the intelligence front?
That is the only thing I can take away from your comment.
You should go work at Google instead,
@ez “ Asking that question makes a statement about you. You never worked in the real world. SAS and academia are not the real world.”
Making assumptions about where anonymous people on the internet have or haven’t worked makes a statement about you. Not a good one.
You would be wrong in a massive way. Shocking.
“… based upon the circumstances of a decade ago.“
CORRECTION: more like 12-15 years ago
… you mean all the years and decades so many of us spent at SAS scaling it several orders of magnitude in customer reach and revenue?
There are multitude of reasons why SAS of recent years is not as successful nor achieved valuations like Snowflake, Data Bricks, major cloud players, …. , etc.. These have been explained and debated in great detail on tens of threads on this very forum, including the reasons the architecture ultimately branded as “Viya” was designed as it was, based upon the circumstances of a decade ago.
SAS has lost 100’s of people that could have made Viya more successful than it apparently is as of 2025. However, SAS still has 100’s of competent people who can carry forth with helping existing customers convert to and effectively utilize Viya. With the correct product leadership/architectural hires, SAS CAN build new products that will, at least in various niche markets, generate respectable new revenue.
@es
Now we get faux moral superiority.
Always the air of “I’m (or we’re) better than you). Pick any facet of humanity, and you folks will claim superiority along that dimension. It’s a feature of this culture. Get over yourselves.
"So, why all the Viya hate here?"
Asking that question makes a statement about you. You never worked in the real world. SAS and academia are not the real world.
Viya is disliked because it was touted as the next big thing for SAS. Time has proven that to be not true. People are on here venting because they see their friends getting laid off and wonder if they are next.
A tenured person(is that you?) is likely incapable of understanding the significance of this. Go back to class, talk less, and listen more. That is your best chance of figuring it out. Seek first to understand then to be understood.
@en calling it faux doesn’t make it fake. There is and always will be a gap. Not just at SAS.
But the low end tends to come out in anonymous forums and only when things aren’t going their way.
work for large customer now. still in process of very slowly moving from 9. if viya were only about running 9 better, it's chasing something we are trying to reduce/eliminate. hopefully there will be something much better than that. good luck to all.
“Calling them Company Man and Company Boy are on the same intelligence scale as constantly commenting on the art department being safe…”
— Company Man
@ef
The company is declining, in part, due to a culture of faux intellectual superiority.
"Increases in Viya revenue is going to tend to be replacements of SAS 9"
The revenue has been stuck at $3B for years Logical conclusion: Viya is not moving the needle. The majority of Viya revenue is a result of customers being forced away from SAS9. In other words there are few new Viya sales. Not good.
@dh “I hope that Company Man and Company Boy are correct”
Calling them Company Man and Company Boy are on the same intelligence scale as constantly commenting on the art department being safe…
@dh “Two large numbers just happening to be equal and opposite would be quite a coincidence.”
We have a wannabe Sir Isaac Newton of the anonymous thelayoff.com world.
That would not be a coincidence at all if transitioning from a legacy system to a replacement modern system.
That is precisely how that would play out. Increases in Viya revenue is going to tend to be replacements of SAS 9.
If you want to talk about new sales that is another conversation. I just don’t understand how you consider that an unlikely coincidence,
Our brains clearly do not work in the same manners.
Other post was right that you are probably S&M…
… 10-15 years…
Here’s a good guess about the Viya naysayers here … the are sales and marketing (S&M 🥹) types who don’t know much about the cost and pains of maintaining an aging legacy software platform (i.e. SAS9) that is destined to die within 10-15 no matter what.
The hard financial and customer install numbers on SAS9 decline vs. Viya rise are opaque to all but a few, none of whom are commenting here.
It is logical to surmise that the company continues to support SAS9, even as existing customers either exit for other alternatives (e.g. open source, WPS, etc.), while SAS works hard to convert faithful customers to Viya AND build out new products exclusively within Viya. All publicly available information supports this.
I hope that Company Man and Company Boy are correct. But neither of them ever provides evidence of Viya’s success.
We have evidence that revenues were flat before Viya’s release, and remained flat afterwards. Therefore, any large revenue increase due to Viya must be balanced by a decline in SAS9.
Two large numbers just happening to be equal and opposite would be quite a coincidence. The most likely explanation is that any revenue increases due to Viya, or declines in SAS9, are small numbers — within a rounding error of $3B.
@b0 careful! You are coming awful close to infringing on my “company man” title.
I honestly don’t think the person who started it has the mental bandwidth to create a second such title. And I’m not really the sharing type.
I read the OP as “most SAS customers only need 80%” of what SAS9 provides. For example: how many traditional SAS customers use SAS Metadata Server capabilities, or Solutions that require it?
Customers doing mostly traditional SAS things, yet also want new multi-threaded analytics actions, native access from Python clients, etc. should be very happy with Viya. Apparently many are!
OP,
None of the above comes as a surprise to someone who has uses SAS as a customer in a business environment.
if the other 20% isn't needed as much, is the running of the 80% better, faster, cheaper in some way? if so, seems like things are on the right track.
if the other 20% is still needed, but things look like they will get there and also be better, faster, cheaper, things are possibly still on track.
if none of the above ... uh oh ... "company man ... etc etc will still need some layoffs"
Well the reasons you are clearly wrong
I think that sums up all the super concrete ways that Viya is not SAS and an abject failure.
I say all that in the most sarcastic way possible because I guarantee people reading it were nodding their heads saying “preach my brother!”