The SAS Institute has updated its products for data mining and forecasting.
The releases represent a greater leap in functionality over other recent revisions, according to Mary Grace Crissey, a product marketing manager for SAS. The earlier versions were “much more GUI-driven,” she said.
Enterprise Miner 5.3 features 15 new analytical tools and additional algorithms, the company said. An accompanying Text Miner product can analyze unstructured data, such as blogs or customer feedback forms.
Forecast Server 2.1, another updated product, includes improved filtering, more than a dozen additional project management macros, and scalability improvements for working with large data sets.
Enterprise Miner licensing starts at US$120,000, with the Text Miner add-on costing an additional US$80,000. There is a desktop version of the product that costs US $40,000, plus US $20,000 for the text-mining option. Enterprise Forecaster pricing begins at roughly US $150,000. SAS charges annual renewal fees that are a percentage of the initial cost, according to a company spokesman.
