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IBM Watson Explorer vs SAS Enterprise Miner comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

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 Watson Explorer
Ranking in Data Mining
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAS Enterprise Miner
Ranking in Data Mining
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM Watson Explorer is 3.6%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Enterprise Miner is 8.3%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAS Enterprise Miner8.3%
IBM Watson Explorer3.6%
Other88.1%
Data Mining
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1319820 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
A data analysis tool that is scalable and includes keyword search functionality
The solution is used for a government company for data collection and analysis I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer. I have been using the solution for five…
reviewer1352853 - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Head of analytics at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees
A stable product that is easy to deploy and can be used for structured and unstructured data mining
We use the solution for predictive analytics to do structured and unstructured data mining I like the way the product visually shows the data pipeline. The product must provide better integration with cloud-native technologies. I have been using the solution for 20 years. The product is very…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main use case is FAQ for the user; it works for almost 80% of the use case coverage."
"I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer."
"The valuable feature of Watson Explorer for us is data entities, and being able to see hidden insights from within unstructured data."
"Previously we'd have a set of health and safety analysts who would be the key focal points for doing work to understand health and safety risks; so a very small number of people, but through WEX and through our Watson HSEQ solution, we've managed to get engagement across at least one-third of our workforce, so over 1,300 people, and a 25% reduction in health and safety incidents."
"Implementing the solution really helped with manual labor, it takes care of a lot of FT work."
"What impressed me more about Watson is that it is easy to use it, not for the technical people, but for business people."
"We take natural language that was happening in our repositories and our application and then feed it to the Watson APIs. We receive JSON payloads as an API response to get cognitive feedback from the repository data."
"For me, as a user, the most valuable feature is the ability to ingest and then retrieve information from a range of separate sources; the ability to dissect questions in context and actually answer them."
"The data processing of the solution is very good, easy to use, both for enterprise and personal use."
"Technical support has been good, and when I called them at the start of using the product with some issues they were very helpful."
"I found the ease of use of the solution the most valuable."
"It enables statistical modeling of data using Base SAS (another product from the same vendor) as the backbone."
"Good data management and analytics."
"he solution is scalable."
"Performance is excellent."
"The solution is very good for data mining or any mining issues."
 

Cons

"We haven't used it in production yet so I can't answer this."
"Much of IBM operates this way, where they have sets of tools that are in the middleware space, and it becomes the customer's responsibility or the business partner's responsibility to develop full solutions that take advantage of that middleware. I think IBM's finding itself in that spot with Watson-related technologies as well, where the capabilities to do really interesting and useful things for customers is there, but somebody still has to build it. Is that going to be the customer? Are they going to be willing to take on that responsibility themselves"
"I would say, give some kind of a community edition, a free edition. A lot of companies do, even Amazon gives you some kind of trial and error opportunities. If they could provide something like that, it would be good."
"Small businesses will probably have a little harder time getting into it, just because of the amount of resources that they have available, both financial and time, but it really is a solution that should work for them."
"The solution is expensive."
"No, it's not yet stable."
"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."
"More cognitive feedback would be good. The natural language analysis is great, the sentiment analyzers are great. But I would just like to see more... innovation done with the Watson platform."
"The visualization of the models is not very attractive, so the graphics should be improved."
"Price of the product"
"Plus it is prohibitively expensive and is not available with perpetual licensing."
"The preparation of both the mining and modeling process could be improved. The solution requires data and will reflect data, but the preparation of the data is not useful for end-users; we ended up having to do the preparation in another tool."
"While I don't personally need tutorials, I can't say that it wouldn't be helpful for others to have some to help them navigate and operate the system."
"The initial setup is challenging if doing it for the first time."
"Virtualization could be much better."
"We really don't like the protocols the solution offers. The solution is much more complex than other options."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The solution must improve its licensing models."
"The solution is expensive for an individual, but for an enterprise/institution (purchasing bulk licenses), it is not a high price for the use that will come from it."
"This solution is for large corporations because not everybody can afford it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Healthcare Company
13%
Performing Arts
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
13%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
 

Also Known As

IBM WEX
Enterprise Miner
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RIMAC, Westpac New Zealand, Toyota Financial Services, Swiss Re, Akershus University Hospital, Korean Air Lines, Mizuho Bank, Honda
Generali Hellas, Gitanjali Group, Gloucestershire Constabulary, GS Home Shopping, HealthPartners, IAG New Zealand, iJET, Invacare
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Watson Explorer vs. SAS Enterprise Miner and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.