 Gartner has identified two major trends in 2013 big data processing and cloud computing. To keep up with these trends, it is essential to provide higher education institutions with the necessary skills and knowledge to trained specialists who can work with these technologies. The authors have developed a course which combines data analysis tasks in both Excel and SPSS environments. In order to further expand the use of statistical data analysis software, they reached out to SAS Academic Support Program. This program provides students and faculty members with access to a free SAS client and cloud-based data analysis services. This article was authored by O. V. Atomenko and L. F. Penchenko.