Copyright © 2008 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks

Copyright © 2008 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration.

BI on the Grid: A Customer BI on the Grid: A Customer PerspectivePerspectiveMarch 23, 2009

Copyright © 2008, SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration.

Agenda

Selection of SAS E-Miner on a Grid as our analytic solution

Systems Architecture implications

System Implementation


ISO Background

ISO • Started in 1971

• Leading source of information about risk

• Supplies data, analytics, and decision support services

• Originally focused on property & casualty insurance

• Now also serves healthcare and mortgage industries and the general risk management function in all industries


ISO Innovative Analytics (iiA) division

iiA • Formed in 2005

• Located in San Francisco

• Expertise: Statistical Modeling, Actuarial Science, Data Management

• Mission: Apply data mining, predictive modeling, and other advanced analytic techniques to create new products and enhance existing products


Situation in 2008

Staff• Rapid Growth – iiA staff numbered about 20 at the

beginning of the year with plans to grow to 35 by year end

• Highly Technical – about 2/3 of staff are M.S. and Ph.D. level statisticians and mathematicians. Most of the rest are DBA’s and data analysts.

Systems• Infrastructure – had evolved over time – 12 analytic

servers plus analyst workstations.

• Tools – wide variety, no standardization -- SAS, Statistica, R, etc.


Needs

Efficiency• Capacity – Our analysts are highly skilled and valuable.

Tools must enable them to work at max capacity.

• Standardization – Difficult to do consistent documentation, training, quality control, and product launches with disparate tools.

Scalability • Rapid growth required a system that could expand

easily as the organization grows.


Analytic Tool Selection

Task force coordinated by ISO systems architect and including iiA analytic staff and management.

Broad market scan of possible analytic tools

Narrowed list to 3 finalists

Received detailed proposals and demos from finalists along with more intensive investigation by task force

Note: Since this was a new system, tool choice would drive system architecture


SAS Enterprise Miner of the GRID

Technical Factors• Scalable – Easy to increase capacity with additional

commodity hardware

• Capable – Best at handling very large data sets for analysis

• Parallel Processing – Explicit and built-in parallelism

“Soft” Factors• Most analysts already familiar with SAS

• “Legacy” SAS code could be run on new system

• Robust technical support system

• Comprehensive training available


Out to CustomerOut to Customer

Customer DataCustomer Data

ISO DataISO Data

3rd Party Data3rd Party Data

Data Warehousing EnvironmentsData Warehousing Environments

Advanced AnalyticPlatform

Advanced AnalyticPlatform

TextMiningText

MiningGIS

AnalyticsGIS

Analytics

ScoringPlatformScoringPlatformModelsModels

Secure Data Area

Secure Data Area

Sanitized Data Area

Sanitized Data Area

iiA Systems Block Diagram

MS SQL Server2008

GRID

SASJMP

SASE-Miner

SASE-Guide

SASModel

Manager


System Architecture

ISO IT team worked with SAS to develop a system architecture specific to iiA’s needs• IBM Blade servers formed the basis of the GRID

• MS Windows-based due to ISO’s expertise supporting this OS

• Since most users are remote from the server location, established Virtual Machines to act as gateway to the GRID for users

• Also built a new data management system based on MS SQL Server 2008 that will eventually provide 18 TB of data storage


“The Grid”

Data WarehousingEnvironments

Users

Virtual Machines


Conclusion

Just finished User Acceptance Testing of the system

Results look promising so far but now comes the real test … 30+ users on the system!


QUESTIONS?

Copyright © 2008, SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Copyright © 2008, SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration.

Documents

Copyright © 2008 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks