Imagine turning a 30-minute job into a 30-second task? Or completing a 3-day project in less than an hour? Or getting a return on investment (ROI) within a week?
This is the type of exciting feedback we like to hear when we welcome a new customer to Metacoda.
Having designed our Metacoda Plug-ins to address specific SAS® platform metadata needs, we’re confident they will help you in many ways to:
- simplify your workload
- improve your accuracy and security
- and, ultimately, save time and money through operational efficiencies.
However, the proof is with our customers.
The following real-life examples show the main ways that Metacoda Plug-ins are helping SAS customers and SAS platform administrators all around the world.
1. Simplify SAS Metadata Security Management
Managing metadata security for a SAS platform is an important responsibility. Here’s how two of our customers are using Metacoda Plug-ins to make this task easier.
DeutschlandCard GmbH
DeutschlandCard GmbH is an affiliated company of one of the world’s largest media corporations, the Bertelsmann Group. They have been offering a customer loyalty program in Germany since 2008, with over 13 million loyalty card participants. Each card is used approximately seven times per month at one or more of the 10,000 partner stores.
The challenge: With such a large complex structure of entities and relationships, the challenge for DeutschlandCard GmbH was how best to implement and validate conceptual changes in SAS metadata and security structure.
The solution: With Metacoda Plug-ins, DeutschlandCard GmbH is able to:
- speed up the acceptance phase using the simple visual interface
- manage SAS metadata security in a continuously changing environment
- keep track of complex structures before and after modifications
- confidently implement, manage and maintain their security requirements using features such as the hierarchical visualizations, search functionality for complex metadata queries, and built-in documentation.
Metacoda Plug-ins helped us to overhaul and strengthen our complex security model extremely quickly due to the very visual interface, reducing our acceptance tests by half. The interface is easy to use and feature rich for exploring and exporting SAS metadata, allowing us to be more agile in business. Frank Boggasch, Head of Business Intelligence Reporting, DeutschlandCard GmbH
Lincoln at Crédit Agricole Group
Lincoln is a French leader in SAS technical consulting, and manages Crédit Agricole Group’s SAS Software environment. With operations in 70 countries, 160,000 employees and 54 million clients, the Crédit Agricole Group is a major player in European banking.
The challenge: Lincoln administers a large SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Integration (DI) platform at Crédit Agricole Group. It services a dozen SAS applications in marketing, finance and retail banking accessed from France and abroad. This highly shared platform, with very specific departmental requirements, requires regular and accurate maintenance of the stringent security model. Protection is provided by a combination of SAS BI metadata security features, application features and operating system security. Lincoln found that it was becoming difficult to review and develop security reports for auditing with these multiple security layers.
The solution: By using Metacoda Plug-ins, Lincoln can now:
- easily examine SAS metadata security across the layers without writing any code
- quickly answer complex questions by using the built-in recommended practice indicators without needing to delve into the documentation.
Managing SAS metadata security with Metacoda Security Plug-ins is such a treat with the ability to make decisions to resolve issues quickly and confidently. The easy-to-use, feature-rich design of the software simplifies the intricacies of SAS metadata security even for seasoned SAS professionals. Ronan Martorell, Lincoln SAS administrator
Visit our website to find out how other organizations – including Amadeus Software, an Australian State Government Agency, BioGrid Australia, and Steve Overton – recommend Metacoda Plug-ins for SAS metadata security management.
2. Quickly Identify and Resolve SAS Metadata Issues
Metacoda Plug-ins give you insight into your SAS metadata security implementation, helping you to identify and resolve issues quickly. Additionally, explanatory tools, tips and icons help you to follow recommended practices.
BioGrid Australia is an independent, not-for-profit company operating a collaborative, medical data-sharing platform. This national platform allows clinical researchers to securely access coded patient data from hospitals and other institutions across Australia via a federated data server.
The challenge: BioGrid Australia specializes in linking real-time data across jurisdictions, institutions and diseases while safeguarding patient confidentiality and scientific intellectual property rights. With ethical approval, this information is then made available to researchers to interrogate, analyze and report upon using SAS software. BioGrid Australia’s success has led to rising numbers of data sources and researchers, which means added complexity. Previously, BioGrid Australia’s SAS metadata access issues were often resolved by time-consuming ad-hoc experimentation.
The solution: By using Metacoda Security Plug-ins, BioGrid Australia can:
- troubleshoot issues concerning effective permissions on objects and identities
- keep track of the security configuration of this increasingly complex SAS metadata environment
- save their SAS platform administrators several days of work each month (for example, the plug-ins saved considerable time when investigating why a SAS® Enterprise Guide® user could no longer access projects stored in SAS folders. Using the reviewers to look at their security implementation from various perspectives, the team was able to quickly identify and resolve the issue.)
Metacoda Security Plug-ins complements our use of the SAS Management Console by giving us a more comprehensive view of our SAS metadata security implementation. We can now expedite the identification and resolution of access issues, saving us a considerable amount of valuable time.Naomi Rafael, Head of Technology & Systems, BioGrid Australia
You can read how other organizations, including SAS Institute Australia, DeutschlandCard GmbH, Lincoln at Crédit Agricole Group, an Australian State Government Agency, and the Netherlands’ Ministry of Economic Affairs are using Metacoda Plug-ins to identify and resolve SAS metadata issues quickly on our website.
3. Easy-to-Use Visual Interfaces
Metacoda’s easy-to-use, point and click interfaces make it possible for users to concentrate on the task at hand.
For SAS Institute Australia – who provide technical expertise to licensed customers in the Australia and New Zealand region – this means using Metacoda Plug-ins to gain transparency on the SAS metadata security model to help their customers to maximize SAS technology.
The challenge: The mission of SAS Institute Australia Technical Support is to help customers achieve their business goals by providing the highest level of technical support. This means making it as easy as possible for their customers to manage their SAS metadata security.
The solution: SAS Institute Australia uses Metacoda Security Plug-ins to:
- easily assess and troubleshoot SAS security metadata for their customers
- efficiently resolve security-related issues
- quickly identify issues during and following migration
- manage the environments they support as part of their remote SAS administration service.
It’s invaluable to quickly see what SAS metadata objects a user has access to, and viewing the identity hierarchy is a great time saver. Angelena Jasny, Technical Support Consultant, SAS Institute Australia.
Metacoda Plug-ins save a huge amount of time and effort in providing a clear, well presented view of SAS security metadata. It has become a tool that SAS technical support staff regularly use to resolve complex customer issues. Tony Dagger, Technical Support Manager, SAS Institute Australia.
Visit our website to read how other organizations – including DeutschlandCard GmbH, Lincoln at Crédit Agricole Group and BioGrid Australia – are benefiting from Metacoda Plug-ins’ easy to use visual interfaces.
4. Simpler Documentation, Testing and Auditing
For some of our customers, it’s in the realm of documenting, testing and auditing, where Metacoda Plug-ins offers the greatest rewards.
The challenge: It can take a lot of work to implement an enterprise-level SAS metadata security plan, and keep it consistent and resilient over time, especially if requirements change. Responding to legislative requirements, or requests for detailed reports from auditors, can also be a challenge. Meeting these business needs can be time-intensive and error-prone if done manually; so they’re often not performed frequently enough.
The solution: Metacoda Plug-ins can help you to:
- manage, regularly test and produce up-to-date documentation on your SAS metadata security implementation
- easily implement, adapt and test your plan
- manage changes in business security requirements
- meet legislative requirements
- produce detailed reports for auditors.
FNB Corporation, a large financial services company operating in the United States are benefiting from the Metacoda Plug-ins’ reporting facility.
SAS Admins – If you have not looked at Metacoda before, I highly recommend it. It has saved me immeasurable hours of work when preparing for audits, or planning to make changes to my security program! Charyn Faenza, Vice President and Manager, Corporate Business Intelligence Systems, First National Bank Corporation
SAS Institute Australia are also benefiting:
When it comes to auditing and documentation, it’s a welcome relief when a busy administrator can easily identify and document the structure without having to navigate through multiple objects’ authorization tabs. Angelena Jasny, Technical Support Consultant, SAS Institute Australia.
Visit our website to read how other organizations – including DeutschlandCard GmbH, Lincoln at Crédit Agricole Group and Finelink Nominees – are benefiting from Metacoda Plug-ins’ documentation, testing and auditing capabilities, and consider it a “must have”.
5. Easily Sync SAS Identities
At Metacoda we love to code, but we know that many busy SAS administrators don’t have time for it. This was one of the main reasons we built our new Metacoda Identity Sync Plug-in.
The challenge: Keeping a targeted subset of identities (users, groups and roles) in-sync with enterprise directories can be a big challenge for SAS platform administrators, often requiring a lot of time-consuming coding, testing and troubleshooting.
The solution: With Metacoda Identity Sync Plug-in, SAS administrators can:
- import, check and synchronize identity-related SAS metadata with enterprise directories without the need to edit SAS code (in one instance we were told that it enabled Active Directory synchronization to be set up in less than an hour after having previously spent 3 days of coding and troubleshooting!)
- easily handle user and group selections, and resolve issues with clashing names and deleted identities
- use the easy point-and-click interface to quickly visualize, review and apply identity changes to metadata
- manage large and heavily nested groups
- produce audit reports of the changes made.
It’s early days for our Metacoda Identity Sync Plug-in, but already we’re getting plenty of positive feedback.
One user said he was “WOW”ed and another said the Plug-in “worked like a charm”.
Thank you to everyone who has been involved in our testing of the Metacoda Identity Sync Plug-in. If you have feedback about your experience, we’d love to hear from you.
Over to You
We hope we’ve given you an interesting picture of how Metacoda Plug-ins are helping real companies around the world.
If you have your own stories about how you’ve benefited from Metacoda software, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
If you’d like to find out how you could benefit from the plug-ins in your environment, you can register for a 30 day free evaluation license for full access to our Metacoda Security Plug-ins software.
