Broadcom?
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LOLLLLLLL that anyone would think Microsoft would want or need SAS for anything! Get real!
Microsoft does not need SAS. The SAS language is slowly dying. Microsoft already has a platform and has been hiring the best and brightest analytics PhDs for many years now.
Does anyone really see SAS bringing value or technology to Microsoft that they cannot more easily and naturally build out on their own platform infrastructure?
SAS is not a strategic fit for Microsoft, because their products are well integrated with R. Similarly, SAS is not a strategic fit for IBM, because they bought SPSS.
The logical buyer will be a serial acquirer of declining enterprise software companies. Broadcom fits that description, through their acquisition of Computer Associates. Private equity firms like Vista Equity Partners also buy such companies.
This business may not sound like fun, but it’s what they do. To them, a $3B annual revenue stream, even though declining, is attractive. It fits their business model.
The buyer must be a large firm, one that can buy SAS for billions of dollars. Small revenue streams such as Fraud, Risk, and JMP may not fit their business model. Such small but profitable revenue streams could either be retained or spun off by the buyer.
Unprofitable or barely-profitable revenue streams like Viya will not fit any buyer’s business model. Such products will be cancelled.
Large firms that purchase declining revenue streams have done it many times. They have a playbook for acquisitions. It always starts with shutting down unprofitable or redundant business units, resulting in a mass layoff.
Even if SAS IPOs, in the end, the likely buyer will be one of these firms.
Lolol… Msft has no need for sas
More lololol.. broadcom train left the station
Power BI is more akin to VA, except much better.
Azure Machine Learning is a closer equivalent to Enterprise Miner or VDMML, as it offers ML pipelines.
Microsoft has no need for SAS. SAS is a dinosaur. Microsoft is a modern, cloud and AI juggernaut.
There is no way that Microsoft would be foolish enough to buy SAS. This seems to be the hope and dream of every remaining SAS employee...but that's all it is...hopes and dreams...it will never happen.
Power BI, while being quite similar to Tableau, also seems quite similar to Enterprise Miner. There was even a much simplified version of a pipeline like that in VDMML.
Microsoft would be my bet.
A Broadcom acquisition would be brutal, if VMWare experience is anything to go by.
But the surviving employees might do pretty well - if you look at the VMWare page on this website, some of them got pretty generous RSU packages, and the Broadcom share price has performed very well since that acquisition.
I'd say Broadcom acquisition would be a good outcome for SAS at this point. JG might have to swallow his pride though...they didn't offer enough for him to sell last time, and if they were to make an offer now, it would be even lower. The old man has been surrounded by sycophants for so long now that he no doubt has a very distorted view of SAS's worth.
Why would Microsoft want to buy SAS? I can't think of a reason.
If Viya revenues were growing, then yes, I can see that Microsoft might be interested given how ridiculously resource hungry Viya is...it would help sell more Azure compute.
But Viya isn't growing. SAS is a declining business. Microsoft has no track record of buying declining businesses. But Broadcom does...a much more likely proposition.
I would think Microsoft seems more likely than Broadcom