Helping communities grow will determine our success: SAS CTO Bryan Harris

financialexpress.com:

Generative AI (GenAI) represents a new age of human productivity and scientific discovery, says Bryan Harris, executive vice-president & chief technology officer (CTO), SAS. In this interview, he talks to Sudhir Chowdhary about some of the major trends in data and AI space, and the strategic role of the firm’s Pune R&D facility in the overall scheme of things.

For decades, we’ve been tackling complex problems in highly regulated environments such as finance, pharmaceuticals, and government sectors. This understanding of regulatory compliance is a significant strength that sets us apart. Additionally, our commitment to reducing cloud spend for customers by optimising our deployments is a key differentiator, ensuring cost-efficiency without compromising on performance. We’re cloud-native, meaning our software runs seamlessly across all major cloud platforms. All our solutions are now on Viya 4 (AI, analytic and data management platform), making our software efficient across different environments. This allows us to extend our models, providing more flexibility for customers who can now deploy them in any computing environment, whether it’s AWS, Azure, or elsewhere. This not only broadens our market reach but also leverages our experience in building reliable models.

We’ve invested heavily, over a billion dollars, in AI and our solutions. This investment extends to models as well. Our long-standing credibility in building models is a significant advantage. Our focus on minimising cloud spend for customers is a significant differentiator. For instance offerings like SAS Viya Workbench – an on-demand analytics environment can execute tasks much faster and more cost-effectively compared to alternatives. This directly benefits