The recently leaked news of Broadcom looking to strengthen its software game and enter the analytics landscape with the acquisition of SAS Institute has given us a glimpse into what could be transpiring. Based on this news, one would have to think that it’s not if, it’s when SAS does get acquired. Many have speculated something like this would transpire, as the platform lacks significant innovation, the analytic requirements are increasing and modern approaches exist, and an owner with no visible successor.
With a price tag being placed on the company and it’s more than 80,000 global customers, I think it is safe to assume we will see something happen in the not too distant future. The question is who will it be? I see players such as Microsoft, Amazon and potentially even IBM or Oracle well suited to make a bold move. These organizations have expertise in the analytic world and could see significant gains from such an acquisition. If one of these major players were to only acquire SAS for their customer base, the end goal would be to sunset the product and move these customers to their more modern architectures.
I for one do not see any major payer keeping SAS as a whole and breathing new life into the nearly 60 year old software offering. This will lead many customers to make a change, I estimate more than 60% use SAS for significant workloads and have done so with security and governance top of mind. This places every single customer at risk of being forced to move to new technologies faster than they may be ready for.
A transformation from SAS into a new architecture isn’t easy. Processes have been developed by many people over many years, and it’s highly unlikely an organization will simply throw this all away and start fresh elsewhere. A migration is how most will choose to proceed, however it will require time to plan, time to convert processes and time to validate outcomes on a new platform. Migrations of massive proportions and complexity often take years. On the upside, it will supply the organizations that choose to make a change with a much more modern approach to their analytic workload, removing barriers and silo’s often seen in SAS environments. It will fuel cloud adoption for these workloads and it most certainly will fuel innovation. Users will realize how much more can be done within new environments, bringing data sets and analytic processes together, into modern, flexible and higher performing solutions. The outcome will be greatness.
Why Broadcom? There’s a lot of talk about 28% of Broadcoms revenue now coming from software, a desire by the leadership to grow their software footprint, and gain a deeper presence inside the world’s largest enterprises. Perhaps, I am taking this too far, but I see great potential for Broadcom to build out advanced analytics in the world of 5G & IoT. I think of integration with Broadcom chipsets for IoT devices delivering edge processing. Could it be possible to run some portion of SAS on IoT and edge devices? I also think of a Splunk like solution tied into proprietary details from Broadcom’s chips changing how devices are monitored, managed, governed and secured. They certainly have the technology from recent CA & Symantec acquisitions. Lastly, I recall the Brocade acquisition at the end of 2017. Brocade’s technology such as network virtualisation software produces a lot of data, data which needs to be analyzed in real time and could seriously impact how we route and react to data. The use cases here are endless.
Perhaps, there’s more to Broadcom working to enter the analytic space than just broadening their software portfolio…
In the end, there are options for SAS to sell, but that will leave the SAS customer with new challenges to overcome. The writing is on the wall, the “For Sale” sign has been made public. Many will begin to explore their options and seek to get ahead of a potential pitfall, others will wait and see. There’s no right answer, but being prepared for the when is a key strategy for all SAS customers at this time.