SAS is now offering its Viya data and AI platform on STACKIT, Schwarz Digits’ sovereign cloud. SAS developed the offering in collaboration with partner CBTW and targets medium-sized European companies that want to keep their data within Europe.
The infrastructure is hosted entirely in Europe and falls under European jurisdiction. With this move, SAS is targeting SMEs that increasingly face stricter requirements for data residency, compliance, and digital sovereignty.
The roles of the three parties are clear. SAS provides the platform. As a SAS partner, CBTW handles delivery, resale, and managed services. And Schwarz Digits, a sister company of Lidl, which is why STACKIT is also known as the “Lidl cloud,” provides the cloud infrastructure. Customers can purchase the managed services directly through the STACKIT Marketplace.
Germany, Austria, and Switzerland will adopt the service first. The company expects to expand into other European markets, though it has not yet provided a timeline.
Cloud-agnostic platform
Viya is built to be cloud-native and containerized, allowing it to run on a variety of Kubernetes environments. The platform already operates on Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. With STACKIT, an additional option lets data storage take place exclusively in Europe.
According to SAS, smaller companies no longer have to make compromises. “SMB customers should not have to choose between performance and sovereignty,” says John Carey, Senior Vice President of Global Channels at SAS. CBTW places particular emphasis on speed. According to Paolo Léon Vacilotto, Head of AI & Data Platforms at CBTW, medium-sized companies should be able to roll out solutions “without months-long implementation projects.”
Tip: SAS analytics is becoming increasingly available on Snowflake, Databricks, and Fabric