The new Visual Analytics technology, part of the SAS High-Performance Analytics suite, allows business users to explore data gathered from corporate databases and the Web, and to generate easy to understand charts, graphs, dashboards and the like.

SAS said the Visual Analytics technology takes advantage of in-memory processing techniques to handle data at much faster speeds than the company's existing analytics tools can support.

Analytics tasks that used to take several hours can be accomplished in minutes using the tool, according to SAS.

Unlike many purely server-based enterprise analytics technologies, Visual Analytics gives business users a full range of data discovery, data visualization and querying capabilities from desktop and mobile client devices, the company said.

The initial version of the new tool allows iPad users to view reports and download information to their devices. Future versions will support other mobile devices as well, SAS added.