The SAS future: Talking opportunities, succession, new IoT division, blockchain, augmented reality, more with Goodnight's No. 2 WRAL TechWire

CARY – Oliver Schabenberger, to use a military term embraced by industry, is "dual hatted." And as chief operating officer as well as chief technology officer at SAS, he serves as No. 2 to CEO and co-founder Jim Goodnight. So no one other than Goodnight has a better hands-on, inside view of the 2018 landscape and beyond for the global software firm that is one of the world's biggest big data juggernauts with an industry-leading emphasis on analytics. And a big part of that future is the Internet of Things as SAS moves to create a division focusing on IoT, which is transforming tech around the world and is forecast as a multi-trillion dollar opportunity by Cisco as well as other firms. In a Q&A with WRAL Tech Wire, Schabenberger, who was promoted to the COO in 2017 after being selected as CTO the previous year, talks about the future and several key issues facing the company.