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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
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (3rd), Data Science Platforms (16th)
SAS Visual Analytics
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (9th)
 

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 20.6%, up 16.9% compared to last year.
SAS Visual Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 3.4% mindshare, down 5.2% since last year.
Data Mining Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM SPSS Modeler20.6%
IBM SPSS Statistics20.0%
KNIME Business Hub18.7%
Other40.7%
Data Mining
Data Visualization Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAS Visual Analytics3.4%
Tableau Enterprise19.2%
Apache Superset9.2%
Other68.2%
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

"We use analytics with the visual modeling capability to leverage productivity improvements."
"Automation is great and this product is very organized."
"We have been able to do some predictive modeling with it"
"We have integration where you can write third-party apps. This sort of feature opens it up to being able to do anything you want."
"It handles large data better than the previous system that we were using, which was basically Excel and Access. We serve upwards of 300,000 parts over a 150 regions and we need to crunch a lot of numbers."
"Extremely easy to use, it offers a generous selection of proprietary machine learning algorithms."
"IBM was chosen because of usability. It's point and click, whereas the other out-of-the box-solution, or open-source solutions, require full-on programming and a much higher skill level."
"Stability is good."
"It provided the capability to visualize a bunch of data in an organized way."
"Data handling is one of the best features of SAS Visual Analytics."
"What I really love about the software is that I have never struggled in implementing it for complex business requirements. It is good for highly sophisticated and specialized statistics in the areas that some people tend to call artificial intelligence. It is used for everything that involves visual presentation and analysis of highly sophisticated statistics for forecasting and other purposes."
"The visualization capabilities and the email functionality are most beneficial."
"I like SAS Visual Analytics for its ability to provide an initial understanding of data through exploration, even before deep analytics."
"It's quite easy to learn and to progress with SAS from an end-user perspective."
"The flexibility of the configuration is valuable to me."
"The technical support services are good."
 

Cons

"I think mapping for geographic data would also be a really great thing to be able to use."
"When you are not using the product, such as during the pandemic where we had worldwide lockdowns, you still have to pay for the licensing."
"Requires more development."
"​I would like better integration into the Weather Company solution. I have raised a couple of concerns about this integration and having more time series capabilities.​"
"The challenge for the very technical data scientists: It is constraining for them.​"
"I understand that it takes some time to incorporate some of the new algorithms that have come out in the last few months, in the literature. For example, there is an algorithm based on how ants search for food. And there are some algorithms that have now been developed to complement rules. So that's one of the things that we need to have incorporated into it."
"We have run into a few problems doing some entity matching/analytics."
"It would be helpful if SPSS supported open-source features, for example, embedding R or Python scripts in SPSS Modeler."
"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 licensing ends up being more expensive than other options."
"Some capabilities are missing compared to Power BI, especially when working with spreadsheet types."
"I haven't come across any missing features."
"Better connectivity with other data origins, better visualization, and the ability to create KPIs directly would all help."
"SAS Visual Analytics could improve by making it more accessible for users outside the organization."
"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."
"In terms of configuration, I would like to see AI capabilities since many applications are now integrating AI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."
"If you are in a university and the license is free then you can use the tool without any charges, which is good."
"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 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."
"Having in mind all four tools from Garner’s top quadrant, the pricing of this tool is competitive and it reflects the quality that it offers."
"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."
"It is a huge increase to time savings."
"It is an expensive product."
"I work with the tool's free version...The tool's corporate version is very expensive and requires a monthly hire."
"It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."
"It was licensed for corporate use, and its licensing was on a yearly basis."
"Visual Analytics is expensive for a small company like mine. You also need to deploy it on a server or cloud, so you pay for the license as well as the cost of the cloud or the server that you will deploy on."
"SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."
"The product is expensive."
"Licensing is simple."
"$10,000 per annum for an enterprise license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
11%
Government
10%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise19
 

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?
The customer comes to you and says they want to deploy it and make a production out of this, which is very difficult and expensive with IBM SPSS Modeler. With MATLAB, there is no problem. I have a ...
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?
In terms of configuration, I would like to see AI capabilities since many applications are now integrating AI. It may be that our current subscription does not include AI-enabled features, but I wo...
 

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.
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