SAS is a data and AI solutions provider based in North Carolina. Its partners span the globe and various industries. SAS is dedicated to combining its software solutions with its partners’ expertise to meet customers’ business needs and help them overcome unique challenges.
The enterprise’s SAS Innovate 2025 conference, which took place in sunny Orlando, Fla., this year, brought together thought leaders and IT professionals from all over the industry to discuss data, AI, and digital transformation.
SAS is a company with a nearly 50-year history. To achieve the growth that they want in the next 50 years, SAS knows that engaging with their full ecosystem of partners—from technology partnerships with giants like Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud, and Accenture to their solution providers and service providers—is key to fostering that growth.
John Carey shares his focus for the SAS channel ecosystem
During the conference, Channel Insider met with John Carey, SAS’s Vice President of Global Channels, to discuss the company’s channel strategy and what the organization offers partners.
“Many of our clients want the value of SAS, but don’t necessarily have the reserves to own and operate that environment,” said Carey. “They want to be a customer of the outcome, not necessarily an operator and are looking to power AI value within their application stack without building their own AI solution, so they insert SAS.”
SAS strategically focuses on the financial services industry (FSI), public sector, and health and life sciences verticals, but they also see huge potential and growth in manufacturing.
The data and AI enterprise has been working with TD SYNNEX to identify industry-knowledgeable partners to actively recruit into their partner community and who are looking to add data and AI to their portfolio of software and services they provide to their clients. These partners understand the industry and its pain points, and, in turn, SAS educates them on the SAS Viya platform. Their partners work with their clients, know how they can solve clients’ problems, and drive value into them by applying Viya and developing use cases and models.
“The [SAS] platform is ubiquitous,” Carey noted. “The ability for us to solve problems in other industries is only limited by the knowledge and imagination of the individuals we’re engaged with.”
The SAS promise: understanding customer and partner needs while committing to technology
Carey says what’s key about SAS is that the organization provides rapidly deployable solutions and a platform that allows it to innovate and develop across all industries by understanding customer needs and how its product can be applied.
“We want to integrate into the customer’s enterprise fabric, but we are led by the customer,” said Carey. “We want to be able to solve the things we can solve and make sure we get that actionable insight out as quickly as possible for the client to make the beneficial returns on investment.”
What can channel partners expect to gain by partnering with SAS beyond the company’s innovative solutions and platform? According to Carey, it’s a commitment to place technology first.
“I can tell you about our program benefits, the training, and the fact that we’re committed, but really for solution providers, technology’s first and everything else is second,” he explained. “They’re excited by what we can do and about the problems they can solve.”
Carey adds that SAS is about meeting the client where they’re at and understanding their business to price accordingly. Regarding their solutions, they want to empower partners to serve their customers and remove the friction from the transaction process.
SAS also has a relationship with Red Hat for security and data governance, and recommends the security company to partners.
“We’re going to work with the right technology ecosystem to allow the customer to have the flexibility they need. Our objective is we want customers to turn data into insights to drive intelligent decision making, so we’re going to work on the part that is relevant to delivering that outcome. So if a customer has a dynamic environment– they want to move around– work with us with Red Hat.”
SAS partner Microsoft recently made a significant push in agentic AI by adding 11 new agents for its Security Copilot. Read more about this move and how partners can approach AI.