{"id":32429,"date":"2020-03-16T11:52:19","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T11:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=32429"},"modified":"2020-03-19T11:56:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T11:56:37","slug":"companies-should-embrace-open-source-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2020\/03\/16\/companies-should-embrace-open-source-software\/","title":{"rendered":"SAS expert says companies should embrace open source software"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For organisations to remain agile and responsive, it\u2019s a business imperative to embrace open source software but meeting regulatory requirements remains a challenge, says SAS Country Manager, South Africa, Akesh Lalla.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re increasingly seeing analytical models being developed\nin open source and it\u2019s easy to understand why. If as an organisation you\u2019re\nhoping to perform as an agile company, developing in open source is attractive,\nnot least because an open source environment supports rapid and agile\ndevelopment of projects and models. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The skills we see emerging from universities into our\nindustry and professional environment, are supporting this trend, with a marked\nupturn in graduates with the skills for developing in open source software,\nusing widely available programmes like Python and R.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s rapidly becoming a tired clich\u00e9, but one thing remains\ntrue \u2013 data is the new oil. Open source provides an open space to tackle new\nchallenges, to explore the data and see what answers it contains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

New projects can enable significant successes with fast\ndeployment, and importantly, it also supports the \u2018failing fast\u2019 strategy\nwithout incurring significant development and infrastructure costs. We also see\ntremendous enthusiasm for open source software in companies where innovation is\na top priority. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem many companies encounter is when the open source\nmodel needs to be taken into production and scaled. While companies are doing a\nlot of development in open source playing with concepts and products, putting\nit into production still presents a challenge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At SAS we\u2019ve embraced open source and developed an open\nplatform that supports and accelerates the entire end-to-end analytics life\ncycle, from data to discovery through to deployment in production and then\nmanaging and governing those models. Evolving companies\u2019 analytics platforms\nand operationalising analytics is where the challenge lies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hybrid approach of combining\nopen source with proprietary software can deliver the best of both worlds,\nbecause proprietary software like SAS\u2019s product offering can address the\nchallenges of taking a project into production and moving to scale for\nenterprise-wide use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Governance is key, particularly in\nSouth Africa, where the regulatory environment is becoming tighter and more\nchallenging. It\u2019s important to be able to see right through your entire\ndata lineage, to know how the data has changed and how AI inside the model has\nimpacted the results and outputs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the regulator asks those questions, organisations must\nbe in a position to answer \u2013 regulators expect companies to provide the\nappropriate levels of traceability and auditability. This is particularly true\nof organisations operating in the financial sector, where regulatory\nrequirements are extremely demanding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of SAS core principles is digital guardianship, i.e.\nproviding mechanisms to meet both expectations of the people entrusting you\nwith their data and the internal organisational moral compasses for protecting\nagreed upon use of the data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crucially, controls are also necessary to provide trust in\nthe data. Businesses have to trust that the results of models are accurate and\nthat those models will continue to perform into the future. Transparency,\ngovernance and security are all essential components and they become even more\ncritical when organisations scale their efforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that the hybrid approach of combining both open\nsource and proprietary software is the most effective way to combine rapid\ndevelopment with deployment at scale and reliability in model management.\nRobust end-to-end data science platforms benefit any company working with data\nat scale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s imperative to work with products that allow data\nscientists to write code and build models in any analytic programming language\nof their choice, but deploy and run them in a controlled, enterprise-grade\nenvironment with full end-to-end traceability. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For organisations to remain agile and responsive, it\u2019s a business imperative to embrace open source software but meeting regulatory requirements remains a challenge, says SAS Country Manager, South Africa, Akesh Lalla. We\u2019re increasingly seeing analytical models being developed in open source and it\u2019s easy to understand why. If as an organisation you\u2019re hoping to perform […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":32430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,275,258,183,9059,13,262],"tags":[5410,356,885,4006,10545,453],"class_list":["post-32429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-intelligent-technology","category-intelligent-technology-newsletter","category-newsletter","category-software","category-south-africa","category-top-stories","category-used","tag-akesh-lalla","tag-open-source","tag-open-source-software","tag-sas","tag-software","tag-south-africa"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32429"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32475,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32429\/revisions\/32475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}