Madan Sheina, Lead Analyst, Software – Information Management

SAP and SAS announced a new partnership to create a joint product roadmap for in-memory analytics solutions. The aim is to make SAS’s advanced analytics software run smoothly on SAP’s HANA in-memory platform, helping joint customers run bigger, more complex, and faster analysis workloads.

The combination of technologies is potentially compelling for customers looking to mine intelligence out of Big Data. However, depending on which side’s perspective you take, this is a curious tie-up between two fierce analytic rivals that each market and sell their own in-memory platforms.

It remains to be seen whether this partnership can bring out the best of SAP and SAS’s core analytic strengths and competencies so that both parties gain, while also creating compelling value for customers. Historically, this hasn’t always been the case. Nevertheless this is one of the more interesting high-profile …