SAS and Microsoft Tackle AI's 'Last Mile' on the Fabric Platform

CARY, NC – December 02, 2025 – For years, the promise of artificial intelligence has echoed through boardrooms and development labs, but a persistent challenge has muted its full impact: the 'last mile' problem. Organizations invest heavily in creating sophisticated AI models, only to see them stall before they can be integrated into the real-time business processes where they could deliver value. Addressing this critical gap between analytics and action, data and AI leader SAS has announced the general availability of SAS® Decision Builder on Microsoft Fabric, a move set to accelerate the operationalization of AI across the enterprise.

This integration embeds SAS's powerful intelligent decisioning capabilities directly into Microsoft’s rapidly growing unified analytics platform. The goal is to provide a seamless pathway for businesses to move from raw data to governed, automated decisions that can impact everything from fraud detection to supply chain optimization.

"SAS' proven expertise in this area makes them uniquely suited to deliver the technology – and answers – users seek," noted Kathy Lange, AI Software Research Director at IDC. "SAS Decision Builder introduces a decision intelligence solution to Microsoft Fabric at a time when customers are looking to their data to help them make confident, trustworthy decisions."

Bridging the Analytics-to-Action Gap

The difficulty in deploying AI is not a failure of the models themselves, but of the fragmented infrastructure and complex workflows surrounding them. Data scientists, engineers, and business leaders often work in separate environments, creating friction that slows down or halts deployment. SAS Decision Builder on Microsoft Fabric is engineered to dismantle these silos.

The solution enables users to orchestrate composite AI workflows—combining multiple machine learning models, business rules, and even logic powered by large language models (LLMs)—within a single, cohesive environment. This allows for the creation of far more nuanced and robust decision-making processes than a single model could achieve on its own.

"Our deep integration with Microsoft Fabric helps customers bring their AI models into production to make real-time decisions that have an actual impact on their business and bottom line," said Shadi Shahin, Vice President of Product Strategy at SAS. "From financial services to manufacturing and beyond, SAS Decision Builder on Microsoft Fabric provides a flexible experience that helps users make the most out of their data and AI investments."

By operating within Fabric, the tool leverages data stored in Microsoft OneLake, the platform’s unified data lake. This eliminates the need for cumbersome data migration, allowing decisions to be tested, refined, and executed directly against enterprise data. For businesses, this means a drastically reduced timeline from insight to implementation.

"Microsoft Fabric was designed as an open, extensible platform so partners can bring differentiated capabilities to data customers already managed in OneLake," explained Dipti Borkar, Vice President & GM, Microsoft OneLake and Fabric Ecosystem. "With SAS Decision Builder now generally available on Microsoft Fabric, organizations can orchestrate models, rules and LLM‑powered logic...accelerating the 'last mile' from analytics to action."

A Strategic Alliance in a Unified Ecosystem

The partnership represents a powerful convergence of two industry titans. SAS brings decades of trusted leadership in advanced analytics and decision management. Microsoft provides the foundational platform with Fabric, which has become its fastest-growing analytics product ever, already used by 70% of the Fortune 500. Fabric’s core design principle is unification, bringing together data integration, engineering, warehousing, data science, and business intelligence into a single SaaS product.

This unified structure is a strategic counterpoint to the often-disjointed toolchains that plague enterprise data initiatives. By embedding its decisioning engine within this ecosystem, SAS not only gains access to a massive and growing customer base but also enhances the value of the Fabric platform itself. Customers can now manage their entire data and decisioning lifecycle—from data ingestion in OneLake to visualization in Power BI to operational decisions with SAS—without leaving the Fabric environment.

This synergy is a key differentiator in a crowded market where competitors like IBM, FICO, and Pega Systems also offer sophisticated decisioning tools. The native integration with Fabric provides a compelling case for organizations already invested in the Microsoft Azure cloud, promising lower friction and a more holistic approach to data governance and security.

Democratizing Decision Intelligence for the Enterprise

A central feature of SAS Decision Builder is its accessible low-code editor. This design choice signals a deliberate strategy to democratize AI-powered decisioning, extending its reach beyond elite data science teams to include business analysts and domain experts. These are the individuals closest to the business problems who can now take an active role in designing, testing, and deploying the logic that drives automated actions.

This low-code environment allows users to visually map out decision flows, integrate predictive models, and define business rules without writing extensive code. For example, a marketing analyst could design a workflow that identifies customers at risk of churning, routes them to different AI models based on their segment, and then triggers a specific retention offer—all through a graphical interface. While this accessibility empowers a broader set of users, it does not eliminate the need for critical skills. Domain expertise, data literacy, and a strong understanding of business logic remain paramount to creating effective and responsible decision strategies.

This approach aligns with the growing trend of the 'citizen developer,' where technology empowers non-technical users to build and deploy applications. By lowering the barrier to entry, SAS and Microsoft are enabling organizations to scale their AI initiatives more broadly and respond with greater agility to market changes.

"SAS Decision Builder will give our Microsoft Fabric customers a powerful, seamless way to connect with their lakehouse data to build, test, govern and drive smarter, faster business decisions," affirmed Tamás Bosznay, Principal Consultant at Katalyze Data, highlighting the value seen by implementation partners. As enterprises continue to navigate the complexities of digital transformation, integrated solutions that simplify the path to tangible results are becoming not just advantageous, but essential for staying competitive.