Amazon Quicksight vs SAS: What are the differences?

Introduction

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Amazon Quicksight and SAS, highlighting the key differences between the two.

1. Data Visualization Capabilities: Amazon Quicksight is a cloud-based business intelligence tool that offers powerful data visualization capabilities, allowing users to create interactive dashboards, charts, and graphs easily. On the other hand, SAS provides advanced analytics and business intelligence solutions, including data visualization features, but may require more expertise to create sophisticated visualizations.

2. Data Integration: Amazon Quicksight integrates seamlessly with various data sources, including Amazon S3, RDS, Redshift, and other third-party data providers. It enables users to connect and analyze large datasets from multiple sources. In contrast, SAS offers versatile data integration capabilities, with support for various data formats, databases, and data warehouse systems.

3. Collaboration and Sharing: Amazon Quicksight enables users to share dashboards and reports securely within the organization or with external stakeholders by providing granular access control and embedded options. SAS also supports collaborative sharing but may be more focused on offline collaboration through SAS Viya and SAS Visual Analytics.

4. Pricing Model: A significant difference lies in the pricing models of both tools. Amazon Quicksight offers a pay-per-session pricing model, allowing users to pay only for the time spent using the tool. On the other hand, SAS typically follows a traditional licensing model, which requires upfront investments and ongoing maintenance fees.

5. Scalability and Flexibility: Amazon Quicksight leverages the scalability and flexibility of the AWS cloud infrastructure, allowing users to quickly scale their analytics workload based on demand. SAS, being an on-premises solution, may require additional infrastructure and resources to scale up or scale out as per changing business needs.

6. Advanced Analytics and Statistical Capabilities: While Amazon Quicksight primarily focuses on data visualization and business intelligence, SAS provides a wider range of advanced analytics capabilities, including statistical analysis, machine learning, and predictive modeling. SAS's extensive statistical libraries and algorithms offer more depth and sophistication in data analysis tasks.

In summary, Amazon Quicksight offers cloud-based data visualization and integration with scalable pricing options, while SAS provides advanced analytics, statistical capabilities, and collaborative features but follows a traditional licensing model.