IT managers name SAS Institute data warehousing "Product of the Year" - 2nd consecutive year

Business Wire, Feb 13, 1997

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 13, 1997--The ballots are in and have been counted. "For the second year in a row, readers of Datamation Magazine have chosen one of SAS Institute's products as their favorite data warehousing product," said Ellen Greenblatt, Datamation Assistant Editor. "Datamation readers overwhelmingly selected SAS Institute's SAS/Warehouse Administrator(TM) because the software provides a single point of control for data warehouse and data mart administrators and can be used with SAS and non-SAS databases."

According to Datamation Magazine, "It handles the entire process from beginning to end, including extracting data by the instructions stored in the metadata, generating the code, and scheduling jobs. It provides a comprehensive set of decision support applications including query, general reporting, and OLAP. The SAS/Warehouse Administrator is open and flexible; it will work on any database you have already committed to using, on any platform." Runners-up in the Data Warehousing category, as announced by Datamation, included IBM, Visual Warehouse for NT 2.1; Cognos, PowerPlay 5.0; Red Brick Systems, Red Brick Warehouse 5.0; and Information Builders, FOCUS Fusion.

IT managers and professionals also echoed the findings of Datamation, "We were able to design, organize, structure and develop a data warehouse in about a month using the SAS/Warehouse Administrator," said Emily Liles, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company computer applications consultant. "We were able to use the product as a tool to help us document a new business rule and get the business unit to agree upon it."

Industry analysts from Meta Group and the Patricia Seybold Group also gave SAS/Warehouse Administrator high marks. "With the release of the warehouse product, SAS Institute should be on the short list for those people who are looking to have the operational framework to help manage the complexity of the data warehouse project," said Aaron Zornes, The Meta Group. "This will be a major breakthrough for SAS and make SAS more than just a toolkit for the power user. It will make SAS a solution that any company and any IT group within large corporations can use to build an enterprise data warehouse architecture," said Wayne Eckerson, Patricia Seybold Group.

"The SAS/Warehouse Administrator meets the needs of Data Warehouse Administrators (DWAs) for rapid warehouse construction and centralized warehouse management," said Jim Davis, Program Manager for Data Warehousing, SAS Institute. "It is designed to extend the existing tools in SAS. software for building and managing data warehouses and data marts; it enables rapid warehouse construction." SAS/Warehouse Administrator provides a metadata management and organization layer to the existing components in SAS software to speed building data warehouses. As the warehouse is defined, metadata describing warehouse entities and relationships is automatically generated and maintained.

SAS/Warehouse Administrator is SAS Institute's packaging of an integrated tool set for building data warehouses. It includes accessing operational data sources, extracting/transforming operational data into warehouse target files, loading or populating the data, and summarizing detail data, creating data marts, and creating multidimensional summary objects. The SAS/Warehouse Administrator is open and flexible, generating program logic, as well as registering existing programs - whether or not they use SAS program logic. It lets you add your own programs, such as COBOL, to the warehouse. With its strong data access, data management, data analysis, and data presentation capabilities, SAS software has been a viable data warehouse tool for many years. Now, SAS Institute is providing new IT tools and interfaces for metadata management, process automation, data warehouse organization, and data transformation. Companies already using the SAS/Warehouse Administrator to build and/or manage data warehouses include: Robert Plan Insurance, Goodyear Tire, Pacific Bell, Dun & Bradstreet, Genentech, U.S. Census Bureau, Merrill Lynch, Brown & Williamson, Keystone Data, Farm Credit, and others.

Now in its 21st year in business, SAS Institute is the world's ninth largest independent software company. The Institute's success is due in part to its continued investment in R&D, $209 million in 1996, and more than $1 billion since its formation. This commitment to customer solution oriented R&D has resulted in the Institute being awarded the reader-selected 1996 and 1997 Datamation magazine Data Warehousing Product of the Year, the 1996 DM Review magazine World Class Solutions for Data Warehousing award (for Outstanding Service & Decision Support tools), the Data Warehouse World `Excellence in Business Information' award (customer service), and other industry honors.

SAS Institute delivers an integrated suite of information delivery software for business decision making that addresses the unique needs of business users and IT departments in their support of the businesses. SAS software includes capabilities and tools for data warehousing including managing, organizing and exploiting the warehouse; business intelligence including EIS, online analytical processing, application development and decision support; and applied analysis including technical data analysis, data mining and neural networking. SAS Institute also delivers business solutions software for applications such as financial consolidation and reporting, clinical trials analysis, and IT service management. Currently, SAS software and business solutions are being used at 30,000 business, government, and university sites worldwide. -0- Our Web Address is: http://www.sas.com SAS is a registered trademark of SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA All other tradenames referenced are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.