Alteryx vs SAS Viya

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Our analysts compared Alteryx vs SAS Viya based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Big Data Analytics Tools, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

The Alteryx platform is a suite of five products offering self-service statistical, predictive and spatial data analytics to achieve enterprise, financial and industrial intelligence. It allows users to create repeatable extract-transform-load workflows, with or without a programming language. Its scalable performance and deployment options enable analysis from the enterprise to big data levels.

A drag-and-drop interface enables high-speed analytics and modeling, supported by a community of model developers in the vendor’s customer base. Depending on the products selected from the suite, it can perform end-to-end BI, from data harvesting from deep data pools to automated operationalizing.
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SAS Viya is a cloud-based in-memory analytics engine that provides data visualization, reporting and analytics to businesses for actionable data insights. Powered by AI, it brings together visual analytics, visual statistics and data science for enterprises to achieve end-to-end self-service analytics. It uses a standardized code base with support for programming in R, Python, SAS, Java and Lua.

Deployable in the cloud, on-premises and hybrid environments, it integrates with a wide range of business applications through an agile, scalable architecture. The vendor offers an introductory 30-day free trial.

Pros
  • Comprehensive features
  • Powerful analytics capabilities
  • User-friendly interface
  • Scalable architecture
  • Strong support from SAS
Cons
  • Steep learning curve
  • Limited customization options
  • High cost of ownership
  • Potential vendor lock-in
  • Resource-intensive
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$99/User, Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
$10,000 Annual
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Tailored to your specific needs
Small
Medium
Large
Small
Medium
Large
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Coding Flexibility: Design workflows in a flexible code-free or code-based interface, depending on individual abilities, needs and programming knowledge. Optionally, create code with C++, Python or R. 
  • In-House Model Library: Save on time and resources during app development; lean partially on the platform’s extensive customer base for the know-how. Access, run and modify any of hundreds of analytics applications in the Analytics Gallery created by the vendor’s community. 
  • Thorough End-to-End Analytics: Perform end-to-end analytics with products each specifically developed for a certain step of the analytical process. Collect, organize and prioritize data with Alteryx Connect and Dataset, execute it with Alteryx Designer and streamline operationalizing models with Promote. 
  • Spatial Analytics: Make location-based calculations — i.e. trade areas, drive time and more — using geospatial data and street map or satellite imagery integration. 
  • ClearStory Data: Perform continuous, automated analytics on complex and unstructured data at the enterprise level through ClearStory Data, acquired by Alteryx in 2019. 
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  • Improve Decision-Making: Make informed business decisions by using historical and current proprietary information to derive analytical insights. Compute vast amounts of data faster and resolve complexities through parallel processing. Boost workflow efficiencies by deploying operational decisions that define real-time best actions at scale. 
  • Self-Service Analytics: Easily perform automated forecasting, goal-seeking and scenario analysis — no technical skills needed. Identify user sentiment through text analytics and incorporate geographical data for a complete picture of business metrics. 
  • Maximize ROI: Save time through built-in automation for data prep, feature engineering, algorithm selection and AI-powered data discovery. Innovate, rather than spending time on tedious data management and analytics tasks. 
  • Data Security: Ensure data encryption at rest and while moving across systems, in addition to auditing protocols. Connect to external data management systems like Oracle, Teradata, Facebook, Amazon and Esri seamlessly through Kerberos, SAML, OAuth and OpenID. 
  • Data Management: Import data by using an IDE or through REST APIs, and visualize and analyze it through self-service data prep. Join tables, apply functions and perform calculations, or drag-and-drop, pivot, and slice and dice to view desired metrics. 
  • Augmented Analytics: Identify relationships in data through automatically generated suggestions and guided analysis, and track anomalies and outliers. Tell data stories by generating easy-to-understand visuals and dashboard summaries in natural language. Derive meaningful insights for the future by creating what-if scenarios for forecasting and predictive analytics. 
  • Mobility: Access business reports on the go through a native mobile app that supports a variety of charts, graphs and tables. Configure app functionality per device for specific users to add and view reports, share links, add and view comments and view alerts. 
  • Scalable Architecture: Leverage its modular microservices architecture to scale as per business needs. Monitor and manage the health and configuration of individual microservices instances through the SAS Environment Manager. Deploys seamlessly to any type of environment, including the cloud, and runs on Cloud Foundry as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS). 
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  • Internal Data Visualization: Display data insights at each stage of ETL, enabling validation and verification at every step of analysis through its in-platform data visualization solution, Visualytics. 
  • Data Visualization Export: Export to data visualizers like Qlikview and Tableau in several formats seamlessly, if the platform’s in-house visualization capabilities don’t satisfy the business’s needs. 
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  • Visualization and Reporting: Dig into data for in-depth analysis and view key business metrics through autonomous data exploration and manipulation. Create and customize interactive reports and charts to share with others across the organization for collaborative insight. Get suggestions on graphics best suited to display pertinent data through auto charting. 
  • Data Modeling: Analyze data with predictive models through regression, clustering and neural networks. Ensure version control by tracking data models from creation through usage by registering, validating and monitoring each version. Creates snapshots of model properties and files and retains them for the future. 
  • Visual Statistics: Build diverse scenarios simultaneously and refine them with what-if analyses to uncover insights through experimentation. Unifies all business tools, irrespective of the language they support, into a common visual analytics solution. 
  • Cloud Integrations: Develop low-code technologies by porting SAS open-source models into mobile and business applications through its cloud-native capability. Optimize analytics workloads on clouds like Microsoft Azure and ensure cost-efficient migration of analytics to the cloud through a workload management tool. 
  • ML-Based Insights: Get valuable insights from new data types by combining structured and unstructured data in integrated machine learning programs. Choose the desired ML algorithm from a range of options and easily find the optimal parameter settings. Use Python within Jupyter notebooks for deep learning functions like computer vision, natural language processing, forecasting and speech processing. 
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Product Ranking

#8

among all
Big Data Analytics Tools

#41

among all
Big Data Analytics Tools

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

86
94
69
96
54
100
89
98
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Data Management
Integrations and Extensibility
Availability and Scalability
Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis
Machine Learning
Availability and Scalability
Computer Vision and Internet of Things (IoT)
Platform Security
Dashboarding and Data Visualization
Augmented Analytics

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Alteryx
SAS Viya
+ Add Product + Add Product
Augmented Analytics Computer Vision And Internet Of Things (IoT) Dashboarding And Data Visualization Data Management Data Preparation Geospatial Visualizations And Analysis Machine Learning Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Reporting 69 54 89 100 96 93 0 86 96 100 98 96 86 93 70 96 0 25 50 75 100
42%
42%
16%
96%
0%
4%
13%
50%
37%
100%
0%
0%
88%
0%
12%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
86%
14%
0%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
86%
14%
0%
86%
0%
14%
87%
10%
3%
93%
0%
7%
0%
0%
100%
63%
0%
37%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
86%
0%
14%
86%
14%
0%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

86%
14%
0%
100%
0%
0%
96%
0%
4%
82%
0%
18%
93%
0%
7%
100%
0%
0%

User Sentiment Summary

Excellent User Sentiment 496 reviews
Great User Sentiment 203 reviews
90%
of users recommend this product

Alteryx has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 90% when considering 496 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

85%
of users recommend this product

SAS Viya has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 203 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

4.5 (158)
4.2 (157)
4.7 (74)
n/a
n/a
4.3 (33)
4.4 (56)
4.7 (13)
4.5 (208)
n/a

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Alteryx and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Integrations and Extensibility. Alteryx stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award
Integrations and Extensibility Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated SAS Viya and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall Big Data Analytics Tools available today and earns best-in-class honors for Augmented Analytics and Computer Vision and Internet of Things (IoT).

Analysts' Pick Award
Augmented Analytics Award
Computer Vision and Internet of Things (IoT) Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Data Analysis: All users who reviewed analytics said that the platform adds value to data through features such as statistical modeling and predictive analysis.
Data Processing: Around 86% of the users who mentioned data processing said that, with a lightweight ETL tool, the solution excels at data wrangling for further analysis.
Data Integration: Citing strong integration with multiple data sources and tools, around 84% of the users said that it works well with big data.
Ease of Use: Approximately 83% of the users who mentioned ease of use said that the platform’s low-code approach, with drag-and-drop functionality, makes the interface user-friendly.
Online Community: The online community is responsive and helpful, according to around 74% of users who discussed support for the platform.
Functionality: With fuzzy matching and join capabilities, the platform is feature-rich and versatile, said approximately 63% of users who discussed functionality.
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Ease of Use: All users who mention its interface say that it makes autonomous analysis and data modeling accessible to users of all skill levels.
Support: All users who review support say that representatives are responsive and helpful in resolving issues and queries.
Functionality: Around 71% of the users who comment on its feature set say that the software helps discover data insights through powerful visualizations and on-the-fly calculations.
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Cost: In addition to the high cost of licenses, the price of add-ons is limiting, said around 89% of the users who reviewed pricing.
Data Visualization: Around 75% of users who reviewed its presentation capabilities said that with outdated graphics, the platform lags behind other solutions in data visualization.
Performance: The solution is prone to infrequent crashes, especially when processing large amounts of data, as said by 65% of users who discussed performance.
Training: Approximately 54% of the users who reviewed learning said that with the documentation not being up to date with latest features, there is a steep learning curve and training is required.
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Cost: All users who discuss its pricing say that the cost of acquisition is high.
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Alteryx is a data science solution that leverages the power of AI and ML to blend, parse, transform and visualize big business data to promote self-serve analysis of business metrics. Many users who reviewed data analysis said that the tool performs statistical, spatial and predictive analysis in the same workflow. Most of the users who reviewed data processing said that, with a lightweight ETL tool, the platform has strong data manipulation and modeling efficiencies, though some users said that it can be tricky to use SQL queries. Citing integration with Power BI, Tableau and Python, most of the users said that the tool connects seamlessly to data from databases and files, apps, and third-party data sources, among others, to expand the reach of search-based and AI-driven analytics. Most of the users who discussed ease of use said that the tool is intuitive with drag-and-drop functionality and a well-designed interface, though some users said error handling can be challenging for automated workflows. Most of the users who reviewed support said that online communities are helpful in providing answers to queries. Citing automated workflows, many users said that the tool helps save time, though some users said that these can be overly complex and need improvement. On the flip side, many users who reviewed pricing said that its expensive licenses and add-ons are cost-prohibitive, and cost per core is high for enterprises looking to scale. A majority of users who reviewed its visualization capabilities said that they need to export data to visually stronger applications, such as Tableau or Power BI, to make the reports presentation-worthy. Citing slow runtimes when executing complex workflows, especially with large datasets, many users said that performance-wise, the solution is prone to infrequent crashes. Most of the users who discussed learning said that with documentation not being in sync with latest releases, training is a must to optimally use the tool. Overall, Alteryx is a data science tool that, with its low-code approach and strong data wrangling capabilities, makes the journey from data acquisition to data insights seamless and promotes data literacy across organizations, though it might be better suited for medium- to large-sized organizations.

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SAS Viya is an AI-powered data management and visual analytics platform with a robust, scalable architecture. All users who reviewed data source connectivity said that it connects to multiple sources and integrates easily with business applications, giving a seamless user experience. With fast in-memory processing of big data sets, it leverages the power of R to enable visual statistics. All users who mentioned predictive analysis said that it enables automated forecasting through what-if scenarios, goal-seeking, text mining and decision trees. Citing ease of use, all users say that the platform is intuitive and enables easy data modeling and self-service visual analytics. All users who mentioned support said that they are responsive and knowledgeable. Around 71% of the users who comment on its functionality say that it is a robust, scalable and flexible platform that enables visualization and analysis of business data, though some users say visual statistics need improvement. On the flip side, all users who review its cost say that the tool is expensive. In summary, SAS Viya is an analytics tool that provides data management, visualization and AI-powered analytics to enterprises for improved decision making, though small organizations and startups might find it cost-prohibitive.

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