Tailored, lightweight AI models facilitate rapid deployment with low overhead
LAS VEGAS, April 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — SAS INNOVATE — Today at SAS Innovate, SAS – a pioneer in data and AI solutions – unveiled a game-changing approach for organizations to tackle business challenges head-on. Introducing lightweight, industry-specific AI models for individual license, SAS is equipping organizations with readily deployable AI technology to productionize real-world use cases with unparalleled efficiency.

AI software provider SAS is uniquely positioned to flex its decades of expertise in applying scalable and trustworthy AI models for prominent global financial, health care, and manufacturing brands, as well as government institutions.
“SAS is evolving its portfolio to meet wider user needs and capture market share with innovative new offerings,” said Chandana Gopal, Research Director, Future of Intelligence, IDC. “An area that is ripe for SAS is productizing models built on SAS’ core assets, talent and IP from its wealth of experience working with customers to solve industry problems.”
In today’s market, the consumption of models is primarily focused on large language models (LLMs) for generative AI. In reality, LLMs are a very small part of the modeling needs of real-world production deployments of AI and decision making for businesses.  With the new offering, SAS is moving beyond LLMs and delivering industry-proven deterministic AI models for industries that span use cases such as fraud detection, supply chain optimization, entity management, document conversation and health care payment integrity and more.
Unlike traditional AI implementations that can be cumbersome and time-consuming, SAS’ industry-specific models are engineered for quick integration, enabling organizations to operationalize trustworthy AI technology and accelerate the realization of tangible benefits and trusted results.
Expanding market footprintOrganizations are facing pressure to compete effectively and are looking to AI to gain an edge. At the same time, staffing data science teams has never been more challenging due to AI skills shortages. Consequently, businesses are demanding agility in using AI to solve problems and require flexible AI solutions to quickly drive business outcomes. SAS’ easy-to-use, yet powerful models tuned for the enterprise enable organizations to benefit from a half-century of SAS’ leadership across industries.
Delivering industry models as packaged offerings is one outcome of SAS’ commitment of $1 billion to AI-powered industry solutions. As outlined in the May 2023 announcement, the investment in AI builds on SAS’ decades long focus on providing packaged solutions to address industry challenges in banking, government, health care and more.
“Models are the perfect complement to our existing solutions and SAS Viya platform offerings and cater to diverse business needs across various audiences, ensuring that innovation reaches every corner of our ecosystem,” said Udo Sglavo, Vice President for AI and Analytics, SAS. “By tailoring our approach to understanding specific industry needs, our frameworks empower businesses to flourish in their distinctive environments.”
Bringing AI to the massesSAS is democratizing AI by offering out-of-the-box, lightweight AI models – making AI accessible regardless of skill set – starting with an AI assistant for warehouse space optimization. Leveraging technology like large language models, these assistants cater to nontechnical users, translating interactions into optimized workflows seamlessly and aiding in faster planning decisions.
“SAS Models provide organizations with flexible, timely and accessible AI that aligns with industry challenges,” said Sglavo. “Whether you’re embarking on your AI journey or seeking to accelerate the expansion of AI across your enterprise, SAS offers unparalleled depth and breadth in addressing your business’s unique needs.”
The first SAS Models are expected to be generally available later this year. Learn more about SAS Applied AI and Modeling here: https://blogs.sas.com/content/tag/applied-ai-modeling/.
Today’s announcement was made at SAS Innovate, the data and AI experience for business leaders, technical users and SAS Partners. Keep up with the latest news from SAS by following @SASsoftwareNews on X/Twitter.
About SASSAS is a global leader in data and AI. With SAS software and industry-specific solutions, organizations transform data into trusted decisions. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW®.
SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2024 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. 
Editorial Contact:Jennifer [email protected] 202-210-4180 sas.com/news
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Leading data and AI platform helps explain and integrate large language models to augment existing processes; SAS Data Maker will address critical challenges without compromising sensitive data
LAS VEGAS, April 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — SAS INNOVATE — So many organizations have jumped on the GenAI bandwagon in the last year, but are those efforts delivering results yet? If the organization uses the SAS® Viya® data and AI platform, the answer is a resounding yes. Infused with large language model (LLM) orchestration strength, SAS Viya is already helping customers accelerate efficiency and productivity. Throughout 2024, SAS will continue delivering innovation by broadening its trustworthy GenAI footprint with the introduction of its own synthetic data generator – SAS Data Maker – and by offering industry-specific GenAI assistants.

Learn more about Viya LLM orchestration and other GenAI capabilities in this solution brief: Accelerate productivity with generative AI and SAS Viya.
“SAS’ guiding principle is everyone should be able to query data and perform complex analytical operations in every phase of the data and analytics life cycle, and generative AI is crucial in this democratization journey,” said Wiktor Markiewicz, Senior Market Research Analyst at IDC. “But most leaders don’t understand AI technology and how they can apply it meaningfully. Having an already trusted data and AI platform available removes the guesswork and kickstarts the generative AI journey.”  
Georgia-Pacific and wienerberger rely on Viya for AI and GenAI capabilitiesManufacturer Georgia-Pacific is a SAS customer using Viya. “When challenges emerge with our manufacturing equipment or process, we leverage sensor data, business rules, recommender systems and generative AI to suggest the appropriate next best action and resolve the problem,” said Roshan Shah, Vice President, Collaboration & Support Center, Georgia-Pacific. “Streaming analytics and intelligent decision management support from SAS Viya helps us capture immediate value by making the right decisions as events occur.”
About Georgia-Pacific, SAS Executive Vice President and CTO Bryan Harris said, “One of SAS’ core strengths is our deep bench of industry knowledge. We understand manufacturing, and we understand Georgia-Pacific’s unique challenges. We help them appropriately scale LLM orchestration and manufacturing-specific GenAI assistant strategies so their employees can use those cutting-edge applications to troubleshoot real-time operational issues.”
Global brick manufacturer wienerberger also uses SAS for AI support. The company reduces energy consumption, cuts greenhouse gas emissions and improves product quality using SAS on Microsoft Azure. “We use AI and IoT analytics from SAS to connect all our data streams and analyze the entire production process,” said Florian Zittmayr, Team Lead for Data Science at wienerberger. “SAS Analytics brings intelligence to the kiln by helping our engineers and employees to gain valuable information about each step and identify specific target values to make the drying and firing of bricks more economical.”
And a global consumer goods manufacturer uses Viya and its GenAI capabilities to optimize warehouse space, allocate inbound shipments and compare “what-if” scenarios based on product demand. SAS helped develop an LLM-based digital assistant by dynamically updating SAS Visual Analytics dashboards so the company’s supply chain teams can easily save time and improve warehouse space usage with in-depth analytics. This conversational assistant allows both technical and business users to generate fast and accurate results and improve decision making using SAS’ trustworthy, explainable analytics.
Organizations are enthusiastic about adopting and deploying GenAI, but there’s often a gap between preparedness and execution. Learn more by reading the US Executive Summary from a new study: Generative AI Challenges and Potential Unveiled: How to Achieve a Competitive Advantage.
Viya stands out in the GenAI crowd because of pragmatic, industry-driven applicationsAs organizations explore GenAI, SAS prioritizes identifying industry-driven and ethically applied use cases. SAS enables secure adoption and fosters accelerated productivity and trusted results across diverse industries and regulatory landscapes. SAS’ GenAI functionality lives in leading products like Viya and SAS Customer Intelligence 360:
GenAI orchestration: Viya integrates external GenAI models with existing business processes and systems, orchestrating LLMs for end-to-end enterprise use cases. These capabilities are now available in SAS Viya.Viya Copilot: Enhances productivity for developers, data scientists and business users with a personal assistant that accelerates analytical, business and industry tasks. Viya Copilot offers diverse tools for tasks like code generation, data cleaning, data exploration, marketing planning, journey design and knowledge gap analysis. The first iteration of Viya Copilot is available through an invitation-only private preview.SAS Data Maker: Addresses data privacy and scarcity challenges by generating high-quality synthetic tabular data without compromising sensitive information, enabling organizations to address data privacy. SAS Data Maker is now available in private preview.Customer engagement. SAS continues to infuse GenAI capabilities into its flagship MarTech solution, SAS Customer Intelligence 360, to help marketers elevate the customer experience. SAS Customer Intelligence 360 already offers GenAI assistance on streamlining marketing planning, journey design and content and creative development. SAS is now introducing three new capabilities in SAS Customer Intelligence 360 for marketers: using GenAI to build recommended audiences based on natural language prompts, a chat experience to interpret audience data and a GenAI suggestion service for email subject lines.The GenAI functionality of Viya makes a meaningful difference to customers planning to:
Accelerate innovation: Seamlessly integrate GenAI models into decisioning workflows, AI/ML applications and existing business processes by using decisioning flow tools like SAS Intelligent Decisioning.Protect data: Support user privacy and security with robust data quality measures, including synthetic data generation, data minimization, anonymization and encryption, so sensitive information remains safeguarded.Create trustworthy and explainable results: Data experts can apply natural language processing techniques to preprocess data and explain the generated output, minimizing hallucinations and token costs.Enhance governance: Use built-in tools to create workflows that validate the life cycle of LLMs, including model risk management.Make more precise decisions: Quantitative decisioning capabilities, critical for successful GenAI reasoning, are built into the Viya platform.Today’s announcement was made at SAS Innovate, the data and AI experience for business leaders, technical users and SAS Partners. Keep up with the latest news from SAS by following @SASsoftwareNews on X/Twitter.
About SASSAS is a global leader in data and AI. With SAS software and industry-specific solutions, organizations transform data into trusted decisions. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW®.
SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2024 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. 
Editorial Contact:Laura Fleek [email protected] 214-803-6692sas.com/news
 
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MANCHESTER, England, April 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Skylab, a UK-based specialist in sports technology and performance analysis, proudly announces its partnership with LTA Padel, solidifying its position as a premier provider of specialised services in the sports industry. This collaboration underscores Skylab’s commitment to excellence and showcases its ability to deliver innovative and diverse solutions tailored specifically for elite sports organisations like LTA Padel.

The LTA’s Padel performance programme in Great Britain will utilise Skylab’s Game Intelligence product and Performance Analysis services. The software will empower athletes and coaches alike with interactive and detailed match data, seamlessly integrated into intuitive dashboards that create automated video playlists. The Padel team at the LTA will gain a deeper understanding of padel at the elite level to support their talent identification, player pathway and coaching strategies as they strive to compete with the world’s best. 
“Previously, Padel players lacked accurate and robust performance data, which made it impossible to analyse the opposition in detail. Coaches couldn’t answer their players’ key performance questions quickly, and performance directors had to rely on gut feeling and experience when evidencing what elite Padel looks like. However, our product and services provide practitioners with insights into the technical and tactical aspects of the game, as well as the physical demands required for elite-level performance. This allows practitioners to understand and predict the future performance of their players, enabling them to make data-informed decisions” says Ciaran Skinner, Business Development Manager, Skylab.
Skylab is a first-of-its-kind sports technology firm, offering tailored, market-leading Performance Analysis services and bespoke web platforms to elite sporting clients. It revolutionises how elite sports teams and individuals interact, use, and visualise their data. By packaging performance analysis with industry leading UX and bespoke software, partners will be in the position to make better decisions in sport.
For more information about Skylab and its services, please visit skylab.com or contact [email protected] 
Notes 
Website: www.skylab.com 
https://skylab.com/padel-performance-insights/ 
Social:
LinkedIn – Skylab: https://www.linkedin.com/company/studio-skylab 
LinkedIn – Skylab: Elite Performance Analysis: www.linkedin.com/company/skylab-epa/ 
About Skylab      
Skylab is a first-of-its-kind sports technology firm, offering tailored, market-leading Performance Analysis services and bespoke web platforms to elite sporting clients. It revolutionises how elite sports teams and individuals interact, use, and visualise their data. By packaging performance analysis with industry leading UX and bespoke software, partners will be in the position to make better decisions in sport. Current clients include elite teams and organisations across Padel, Football, Athletics, Tennis, Rowing and more.
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