Distributing SAS Applications on IPhone

The distribution of products and services has radically changed in recent years as it becomes more efficient for companies like Google, eBay and Amazon to take advantage of efficiencies of Internet distribution. Rather than concentrating on the top few block buster products, these companies are finding that the many niche products such as specialized advertisement on Google and esoteric books on Amazon add up to be just as significant in total sales as their supper sellers. The cost for them to distribute the large array of solutions has become profitable when efficiently delivered across the internet as compared to shrink wrap boxes sold in stores. This shift in the market is also taking shape in how software is being delivered. Apple has been at the forefront with this type of distribution with smaller unknown musical artist on its ITunes store. It is now extending that making the AppStore a new way in distributing more specialized software within this hyper efficient distribution model. This is apparent when over 50,000 applications have been made available and growing. The mobile computing platform such as the iPhone has become a potent platform to deliver useful and specialized analytics software to users. At the current moment, however, there is very little in this space for business intelligence applications on the Appstore and none for SAS. It is unquestionable that SAS can deliver sophisticated business intelligence information by delivering SAS macros coupled with its programming language to deliver tremendous analytical power. In the past, the access to these tools has been limited to power users who can write SAS code or utilize BI tools on SAS servers. BI Flash software presents examples where the power of traditional SAS programs can be delivered to users on the iPhone. This bridges the gap by delivering endless possible aggregate views of the data to users without requiring them to understand SAS programming or the details of the SAS system. This will truly liberate business intelligence to be accessed by any user allowing them to get the latest information anytime directly from a device in their pocket.

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