One thing the pandemics has taught is that the world keeps spinning, we evolve and find new and better ways of working together.  SAS Institute is constantly evolving the software, support and frameworks, and this year we will have again the SAS Global Forum, still virtual of course, but this time bigger and better. We at OCS are looking forward to it! 

In this article, we would like to share with you some observations and highlight what we are really excited about! The time for the SAS Global Forum is always a very exciting time. We can learn about what comes next within SAS, we learn from each other's achievements and best practices, and most of all, we have a unique opportunity to interact with each other and to have some fun. This year SAS have reorganised the event with many enhancements and changes to offer something closer to the real live Forum experience.

The first thing we notice is the fact the Global Forum is now split into 3 main global time zones: May 18th to 20th for the Americas, May 19th to 20th for the Asia Pacific region, and May 25th to 26th for the EMEA region. This will be very interesting, as it allows a much broader audience which hasn’t been the case in decades!

Looking at the agenda we can see, in comparison to last year, there are many more activities organised: in addition to the usual keynotes and breakout sessions, SAS has incorporated Wellness breaks, Trivia breaks. Of course, we can still enjoy the Code Doctor sessions, appointments, the Innovation Hub, the SAS lounge, ... and so on!

The keynotes and award-winning entertainers this year are very special as well, as always! Adam Grant, Ayesha Khanna, Keith Urban, Hakeem Oluseyi, Wolfgang Puck, Ben Seidman.  I am particularly interested in hearing Dan Levy, Emmy winning director, actor and producer, lately beloved by his last TV-series Shitt's Creek!

Last but not least, there is the sessions and proceedings. We don't yet have the full list of sessions - which is scheduled to be published on May 4th (and the proceedings just before the Event). Nonetheless, we have an extended teaser of 150 initial sessions.

We have gone through this list and the end of this article you can find a list of suggestions presented by the OCS team.

In general, based on the list we can observe SAS moving in a particular direction, that is - deeper dive into the cloud, Viya 4, and the strategic partnership between SAS and Microsoft. The list below summarizes the content:

- some exciting "what's new" sessions

how the strategic partnership between SAS and Microsoft is evolving and becoming a reality.

- another strategic partnership between SAS and Boemska, to enhance performance analysis and migrations.

- of course, the efforts on moving to the Cloudand, no surprise, with special attention to Microsoft Azure.

- all about SAS Viya, and the differences between Viya 3.x and Viya 4, their evolution, how to work with them and how to migrate.

- specially with COVID, Life Sciences and SAS' support to it has stronger presence, in addition to PhUSE;

- business cases from many different industries.

- the always mind-blowing best practices and innovation done with SAS.

- some additional topics about the SAS GRID.

- and, as mentioned, some relaxing events, such as Fitness and Yoga sessions, and SAS User Communities organized Q&A and tournaments!

Details about these sessions can be found here.

The registration is now open, and it is free of any charge -

We at OCS Consulting are really looking forward to “meeting” you.

Don’t forget to read the suggestions from the OCS team