SAS is adding new components to its Viya analytics suite to enable faster development of AI-based applications and models.
The new software-as-a-service (SaaS) modules, dubbed SAS Viya Workbench and SAS App Factory, are lightweight development environments that support multiple programming languages, the company said.
SAS Viya Workbench is intended for building AI models by using programming languages such as Python, R, and SAS. App Factory, on the other hand, can be used for creating AI-based applications.
Viya Workbench, which is currently in private preview and expected to be made generally available in 2024, will soon offer three code editor clients, including Jupyter Notebook, Visual Studio Code, and SAS Enterprise Guide.
SAS App Factory, on the other hand, will allow enterprises to automate the setup and integration of a cloud-native technology stack built on React, Typescript, and Postgres in order to let developers focus on getting AI models and AI-driven applications into production, SAS said.
App Factory, which is expected to be made generally available in 2024, is currently being used by utility companies and hospitals, SAS said.
For instance, data professionals and medical staff at Cambridge University Hospitals are using App Factory to develop an application to increase the success rate of kidney transplants, SAS said. The application focuses on the critical time window when histopathologists can review kidney biopsies to determine transplant viability.
“Using computer vision and AI, the application scores every biopsy and prioritizes the candidate kidneys so histopathologists can more quickly identify the most viable kidneys for transplants,” SAS said in a statement.
SAS has also devised an energy forecasting cloud with the help of App Factory that allows utility planners and managers to bring together massive amounts of data and generates AI and analytics-powered models for predicting peak power demand and providing more accurate forecasts.
SAS is also partnering with Microsoft to jointly develop a generative AI integration that combines the scale of Microsoft Azure OpenAI with SAS’ orchestration of enterprise tasks and existing analytics.
This integration is expected to be available in a private preview in the fourth quarter of 2023, the company said.
In 2020, the two companies formed a partnership to allow enterprises to shift their SAS analytical workloads to the cloud with Azure as the preferred partner.