Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM SPSS Modeler vs SAS Visual Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM SPSS Modeler
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (4th), Data Science Platforms (13th)
SAS Visual Analytics
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM SPSS Modeler is designed for Data Mining and holds a mindshare of 17.3%, up 16.4% compared to last year.
SAS Visual Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 4.5% mindshare, down 6.1% since last year.
Data Mining
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

PeterHuo - PeerSpot reviewer
Good tool for extracting data from data warehouses, creating streams, and manipulating logic to extract final data
There are performance issues. Extracting data from many combined tables can take hours and occasionally crash the server due to memory leaks. This performance problem bothers people. The performance issue seems to be related to the server. We design streams on the client and submit them to the server, which generates a large SQL statement. There are two potential bottlenecks: one in the server and another in data extraction. I'm unsure about the exact mechanics of data splitting when fetching from the database. When streams become larger, performance bottlenecks may occur in the IBM SPSS Modeler server or the database. Sometimes the server crashes and needs to be restarted to release memory on both sides. I'm not sure exactly where the problem is caused, as I focus on stream design rather than server issues. The problem could be on the IBM SPSS Modeler server and database.
Renato Vazamin - PeerSpot reviewer
Single environment for multiple phases saves us time, and has good visualizations
We had that solution installed previously in another solution, Selvaya, but I don't think we used it at the time. We are now using SAS Detect Investigation as a complementary solution, in which we have part of the process, use a gene, SAS collects information and identifies some business situations, and the business guys use Visual Analytics to explore the results of the process. We previously used the FICO platform, but we switched because FICO's pricing was not scalable. Bringing more data or workloads to the platform required a significant investment in order to scale. We needed to change because we have a lot of data to process every day. FICO was also a little more complicated than SAS Visual Analytics.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is pretty scalable."
"It's very easy to use. The drag and drop feature makes it very easy when you are building and testing the streams. That's very useful."
"I think the code modeling features are the most valuable and without the need to write a code back with many different possibilities to choose from. And the second one is linked to the activity of the data preparation."
"Our business units' capabilities with SPSS Modeler is high. They no longer waste time on modeling and algorithms, meaning they are not coding any more. For example, segmentation projects now take one to three months, rather than six months to a year, as before."
"It’s definitely scalable, it’s all on the same platform, it’s well integrated. I think the integration is important in terms of scalablility because essentially, having the entire suite helps a lot to scale it"
"It is very scalable for non-technical people."
"It helped me in that I didn't need to write them by hand, and I could get a result in one or two minutes. That helped me a lot."
"Stability is good."
"It's quite easy to learn and to progress with SAS from an end-user perspective."
"Visual Analytics is very easy to use. I use Visual Analytics for all the typical use cases except text mining. I used it to analyze data and monitor statistics, not text mining. I also use it for data visualization as well as creating interactive dashboards and infographics."
"The technical support services are good."
"It integrates well with SAS, making it simple and quick for developers."
"I believe that the possibilities for exploring data and formulating visual results are quite good because it allows the business analyst to have different perspectives on the data."
"Quick deployment to dashboards and analytics features (using SAS Visual Statistics and Enterprise Guide). Easy to create a simple forecast and discover business insights using segmentation tools."
"I would rate the overall solution a ten out of ten."
"Great for handling complex data models."
 

Cons

"Formula writing is not straightforward for an Excel user. Totally new set of functions, which takes time to learn and teach."
"It is not integrated with Qlik, Tableau, and Power BI."
"There are performance issues. Extracting data from many combined tables can take hours and occasionally crash the server due to memory leaks. This performance problem bothers people. The performance issue seems to be related to the server. We design streams on the client and submit them to the server, which generates a large SQL statement. There are two potential bottlenecks: one in the server and another in data extraction. I'm unsure about the exact mechanics of data splitting when fetching from the database."
"Requires more development."
"If IBM could add some of the popular models into the SPSS for further analysis, like popular regression models, I think that would be a helpful improvement."
"It would be good if IBM added help resources to the interface."
"The platform's cloud version needs improvements."
"I can say the solution is outdated."
"The charts and tables could use better sorting, primarily using other variables than the ones on the figure. If they could implement views like in the older version (previous to Viya), it would be very nice."
"The solution is a little weak at the front end."
"The deployment isn't smooth. Deploying Visual Analytics on the cloud takes a lot of work, or you can use some providers that give you SAS as a service. For example, there is a provider called SaasNow. They host SAS Visual Analytics and the license. You can buy the license and deploy it there without the hassle of installation because deploying the software isn't easy."
"The visualization should be better in SAS Visual Analytics. It is easy to use but when compared to other solutions it is lacking and the support is not very good."
"The licensing ends up being more expensive than other options."
"There are certain shortcomings in the tool's support services, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The integration aspects of the solution could be improved."
"There are scalability issues. It depends on the data volume and number of end-users. VA requires a lot of hardware resources to move volumes of data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The government has funds and a budget, it's hard to say if it's expensive or cheap. In Canada, they have a yearly budget. They used to encourage people to use the modeler for development. If ten users use the server with ten licenses, it runs faster. But if forty users use the same appliance, everything slows down. People then think it's not easy to do things and prefer using remote tools like Python to extract data from the database. It's not about being expensive or cheap, but about people's knowledge and experience in how to do the work."
"It got us a good amount of money with quick and efficient modeling."
"$5,000 annually."
"It is a huge increase to time savings."
"When you are close to end of quarter, IBM and its partners can get you 60% to 70% discounts, so literally wait for the last day of the quarter for the best prices. You may feel like you are getting robbed if you can't receive a good discount."
"The scalability was kind of limited by our ability to get other people licenses, and that was usually more of a financial constraint. It's expensive, but it's a good tool."
"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."
"It is an expensive product."
"The product is expensive."
"The cost of the solution can be expensive. There is an additional cost for users."
"$10,000 per annum for an enterprise license."
"I work with the tool's free version...The tool's corporate version is very expensive and requires a monthly hire."
"It was licensed for corporate use, and its licensing was on a yearly basis."
"It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."
"The product is quite expensive."
"SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Mining solutions are best for your needs.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
12%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM SPSS Modeler?
Compared to other tools, the product works much easier to analyze data without coding.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM SPSS Modeler?
The government has funds and a budget, it's hard to say if it's expensive or cheap. In Canada, they have a yearly budget. They used to encourage people to use the modeler for development. If ten us...
What needs improvement with IBM SPSS Modeler?
There are performance issues. Extracting data from many combined tables can take hours and occasionally crash the server due to memory leaks. This performance problem bothers people. The performanc...
What do you like most about SAS Visual Analytics?
The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Visual Analytics?
It's about an average of five. It's easy to scale, but it comes with cost.
What needs improvement with SAS Visual Analytics?
Some capabilities are missing compared to Power BI, especially when working with spreadsheet types. Furthermore, Excel is more customizable compared to SAS Visual Analytics, which can be quite rigi...
 

Also Known As

SPSS Modeler
SAS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Reisebªro Idealtours GmbH, MedeAnalytics, Afni, Israel Electric Corporation, Nedbank Ltd., DigitalGlobe, Vodafone Hungary, Aegon Hungary, Bureau Veritas, Brammer Group, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, InSites Consulting, Fortis Turkey
Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions.
Find out what your peers are saying about Knime, Weka, IBM and others in Data Mining. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.