The Amazon cloud continues to drive data transformations in the enterprise every day. And yet, companies in segments like insurance and finance are still struggling to modernize one critical source of analytics vital to improving customer experiences, competitive advantage and bottom-line profitability. Those falling farther behind in analytics modernization are hampered by millions or more lines of code and hundreds or thousands of reliant stakeholders – and no solid understanding of what it all does - deeply rooted in legacy SAS Institute workloads.

Both highly valuable and difficult to harness for transformation, the task of translating these assets into modern data platform strategies is a rapidly rising priority for the C-suite. And in the broader AWS ecosystem, Corios is the dedicated specialist marketplace partner converting these legacy SAS Institute workloads to a modern framework on the Amazon cloud.

On their own, companies attempt a conventional yet overwhelming inventory and scope approach to comprehending their legacy SAS workloads. This can only end in manual, error-prone and near-sighted efforts that waste time, effort, and money. Instead, Corios helps focus customer resources to establish a comprehensive and prioritized assessment that drives an action-oriented inventory of SAS workloads, data assets and users. Knowing as much possible about the code and its uses is critical for a well-planned migration roadmap to AWS that achieves both agility and efficiency gains offered by cloud services. More than a technical problem, Corios uniquely approaches modernization based on assessment and conversion strategies encompassing who and how programmers and analysts create and use workloads.

Corios is the AWS partner to the enterprise in financial services, insurance, and health care that offers the software accelerators, expert consultants, and client team member training so companies can successfully navigate a migration and modernization strategy that transforms SAS analytics into either a re-platform or a gradual transformation into open source frameworks on Amazon Web Services.

Regarding the cloud-driven trends in data transformation, Corios’ CEO and Founder Robin Way says, “We don’t anticipate any slowdown in the adoption of the Amazon cloud. As our key customers in insurance, banking and health care build on investments made in core infrastructure with analytics modernization, we foresee an increase in workload migration that leverages those investments.”

For Corios customer, this will spur a deeper need for the training and hands-on tools for translation to open-source languages that truly maximizes the conversion of legacy SAS to modern frameworks like Python and Spark in concert with Amazon Glue, Elastic Map Reduce (EMR) and Lake Formation services for data engineering and Amazon SageMaker for data science services.

As an AWS Consulting Partner with a specialty in migrating legacy SAS workloads to the Amazon cloud. Corios builds and migrates data repositories, analytics workloads, and business solutions on the AWS platform for enterprise clients, particularly in the financial services and health care industries.

Way states, “Corios Rosetta is the software, services, and training solution for advancing critical legacy SAS data sources and the internal experts who rely on those assets to provide business insights that drive business results.”

Talking about the challenges, Way says that the first challenge their clients face is visibility into all the nooks and crannies where their legacy workloads have reached over the last 10-20 years. Their legacy data analytics workloads are hiding in plain sight, but historically there hasn’t been any mature governance in place over these workloads and the data that supports them.

Another challenge Corios address head on is building the organization's sheer will to agree that old ways of performing data analytics must be replaced with new skills and processes. The benefits simply no longer outweigh the costs and risks of doing nothing to tackle the modernization of these sheltered corners of their analytics brain trust.

Directly related to this challenge is convincing their programmers, who often only know the legacy tools, to embrace the discomfort of learning new languages, capabilities, and cloud services. Many of these legacy-era programmers can feel either threatened or simply ‘too busy’ to invest time in the new capabilities. However, the pressure of technological advances and a rapidly expanding data engineering and data science workforce also pressure these legacy-skilled analysts to upgrade or move on in their careers.

Easing legacy SAS workload migration to Amazon Web Services (AWS) unlocks analytics value often hiding in plain view and reveals priority workload attributes best suited for modern cloud infrastructure. Rosetta provides a transparent means for assessing the people and processes required for transformation and a white-box conversion method that is both secure and compliant.

Scalable up to tens of thousands of workloads and millions of lines of code, Corios Rosetta's solution identifies:

·  ‘Best Path’ methodology to the cloud

·  Evidence-scored resource allocation

·  Compliance assessment for GDPR, CCPA

·  PII data presence and location in all SAS files

·  Elimination of data security breach risks like plain-text passwords and non-secure data at rest

Through their partnership with AWS, they have proven the Rosetta services and solution to accelerate analytic processes and functions and transform legacy SAS assets into higher producing, lower cost data-driven alternatives.

Citing the case studies, Way conveyed one example where CVS Health wanted to migrate its revenue integrity workloads from on-premises SAS to Amazon Glue. Corios led the data engineering and migration engagement on behalf of AWS Professional Services. The workload was converted to Glue in seven weeks, saving the client 16 FTEs of lost productivity annually and improving regulatory filing accuracy by 30%.

In another engagement, a leading U.S. insurance company wanted to modernize its SAS assets. The company adopted the methodology of Corios Rosetta software and services to scan, inventory, and score their SAS data and analytics components. As a result, the company reallocated 150 terabytes of data storage, saving ~$0.5M annually. Right-sizing their SAS licenses saved another $800K annually, and consolidating duplicate processes and staff led to $4M in expenses saved annually.

The combined consulting services, proprietary Rosetta software products, and Rosetta Academy training that sets Corios apart from any other solution providers teamed with Amazon. In its 13-year history, Corios has remained laser-focused on modernizing legacy SAS analytics, and through their partnership with Amazon the company stands alone as the marketplace resource for migrating legacy SAS to the cloud.

At Corios, the team brings analytics, data, and programming expertise to the table on every engagement. But paramount to every engagement is a deeper belief about why customers find success. Way characterizes these migrations not as technology-first initiatives, but instead as people-first, because the enterprise's team members need to be fully engaged and supportive of the change initiative. Each customer engagement differs in large part because progress requires first changing the hearts and minds of SAS programmers to usher them into the future of cloud analytics practices.

“We help the enterprise's team members learn, be empowered, and modernize their skills and engagement first. The technology capabilities then remove obstacles and improve efficiency.” 

Preparing internal stakeholders for the future is core to the success of legacy SAS migration and core to the work Corios does as a program manager, guide, and evangelist for the internal client team.

Corios remains a North America-focused partner to Amazon and customers looking to migrate legacy SAS to the cloud. With the support and encouragement of AWS, Corios plans to increase enrollment in their Rosetta Academy in 2023. This formalized training aspect of the Corios Rosetta solution strengthens the value from their investment in the Rosetta approach.

“We also see future self-serve solution options, like self-service inventory solutions and code conversion APIs for Rosetta in the Amazon Marketplace so customers can initiate their migration assessment,” says Way.