Demystifying SAS platform administration and why its important for you
SAS platform administration is not the first thing that comes to your mind when talking about SAS analytics. But it should be.
While SAS analytics holds immense value for businesses, what it can do and how efficiently it does depends on the quality of administration services. Yet, a lot of organisations don’t quite realise just how important platform administration is.
In the following post, I’ll be highlighting the misunderstanding that exists around the idea of SAS platform administration.
What is SAS platform administration?
To put it in the simplest terms possible, SAS platform administration acclimatises your SAS platform into the overall IT infrastructure. People in this position often act as the bridge between the SAS platform, IT department and business users.
Platform administration refers to the installation and maintenance of the platform and ensures that it is working in sync with the IT infrastructure.
SAS administration covers a wide range of responsibilities that include testing and upgrading the platform, evaluating the software for fixes, finding disk space for permanent data, analysing results and creating documentation for the platform.
Why should it matter to business users?
Platform administration offers several benefits that affect the quality of findings. Here are just some of the advantages.
Optimising the platform
SAS platform administration is necessary because it ensures that the platform is well-optimised, making sure that issues don’t clog data collection and analysis. When administration services are not properly done, it leads to several problems that compromise the quality of findings and hurts processes.
When platform administration services are properly rendered, it leads to several business benefits, like lower operating costs, more efficient data analysis and more relevant, actionable insights.
SAS platform administrators are responsible for the overall health of the platform because they are expected to fulfil a variety of maintenance services. Without a platform administrator, it would be difficult to keep the platform in optimum condition to generate insights that would be useful to business operations.
Maintaining the platform is challenging
SAS platforms have an incredibly complex backend. While many organisations have their own IT team to maintain infrastructure, administrating a SAS platform can be a challenging endeavour without any training or experience.
An example is the use of logs. SAS generates plenty of logs, there are programming logs, remote service logs, object spawner logs, metadata server logs, pooled workspace logs and SAS stored process logs. These logs provide plenty of information on the current status of the platform.
Without the logs, it would be impossible to optimise the platform to keep business insights sharp and relevant. Knowing where the logs are, how to read the information, and how to put it to good use is a crucial part of the administration process.
SAS platform administration ensures that you can maximise the ROI of your analytics investment.
Furthermore, when SAS platform administration is conducted properly, it ensures that data is well-maintained and taken care of. This is because one of the duties of a SAS platform administrator is to generate and keep data backups. Additionally, if your IT team runs into a problem with the SAS platform, the first person they can turn to is the platform administrator, making it easier to resolve problems in quick time.
Get started with SAS administration
Given the importance of SAS administration, finding the right person who can help optimise the platform is very important. The ideal administrator is someone who not only understands the SAS platform but also someone with business knowledge and an understanding of how the organisation works.
It is important to work with administrators who not only have a lot of experience administrating SAS platforms but also understand how your businesses works. This makes it easier for the administrator to finetune the platform to meet your objectives.
Selerity has a team of administrators more than capable of providing the SAS platform administration services you.
