SAS Institute Announces Enterprise Integration Technologies

Business Wire, June 18, 1999

DEN HAAG, Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 17, 1999--

First to Deliver a Holistic View

of an Organisation's Information Assets

Today at SEUGI, the SAS European User Group, SAS Institute announced the first technologies that allow organisations to realise the value of their information assets by integrating applications at the information process level. Delivered as part of Version 8 of the SAS System, Enterprise Integration Technologies allow IT departments for the first time to provide business with a holistic view of the enterprise. Enterprise Integration Technologies surface data from point solutions, in which an organisation's information assets are typically locked, into the SAS Data Warehouse, that serves as the hub that both links these point solutions and allows organisations to add value to the information within them and surface new knowledge to decision makers.

"We're about to enter a new millennium in which business success will be driven not by the efficiency of standard processes but by an organisation's ability to create and act upon knowledge," says Allan Russell, Vice President of Strategy for SAS Institute Europe, Middle East and Africa. "IT will play a central role within the new knowledge-driven company in integrating the informational environment. Enterprise Integration Technologies are a key enabler to achieving that integration. By eliminating the barriers to information integration, IT will, for the first time, be able to demonstrate the total value, as opposed to the total cost, of applications ownership."

The difficulties in surfacing information from point systems is leading to a new class of software called Enterprise Applications Integration (EAI). These are tools that surface data from operational, ERP and other systems in a way that can be interpreted by others.

"Whilst these tools are valuable in extracting data from point systems, and exchanging data between them, SAS Institute is unique in both extracting data, and adding the value to it that results in knowledge," says Russell. "For example, an EAI tool might transmit a series of product orders from an e-commerce system into an ERP logistics package. However, the EAI tool does not add value to that data so that a knowledge worker can establish how long it typically takes to fulfil orders that are entered via the Web. SAS Institute is unique in providing both the technologies to surface the data, and award-winning data warehousing, data mining and analysis capabilities to create knowledge from that data, and distribute that new knowledge throughout the organisation."

Enterprise Integration Technologies allow organisations to integrate;

- Across business processes

- Across clients

- New information back into operational processes.

Integrating across business processes

Although large numbers of organisations have standardised many of their business processes through the implementation of ERP systems, these systems cannot provide business with the holistic view of either its customers, or its performance, that it increasingly requires. Many organisations have multiple ERPs and customer-facing processes that are not executed within an ERP system. Enterprise Integration Technologies meet this challenge through the most comprehensive suite of Intelligent Access Engines that surface information required for decision-making from front and back-office applications.

Integrating Across Clients

Enterprise Integration Technologies allow knowledge to be surfaced and tailored to the needs of any client. Support for the COM and CORBA distributed object standards make the power of SAS Institute's award-winning data warehousing, business intelligence and decision-support functionality open to any standards-compliant third-party front-end, on any platform, allowing organisations to integrate those front-ends within SAS Institute's proven information delivery strategy.

Adding value back into operational systems

Enterprise Integration Technologies allow for knowledge derived from back-office analysis to be fed in real-time back into operational systems, allowing organisations to directly apply their knowledge and therefore realise greater value from it. This is especially important in customer-facing applications such as call-centre operations, where an agent can enter information on a caller and, in real-time, receive the results of scoring that indicate the customer value, allowing the agent to route the call appropriately. Feedback into operational systems is enabled within Enterprise Integration Technologies through support for IBM's MQSeries and Microsoft's MSMQ messaging platforms.

Part of an Information Delivery Architecture

Enterprise Integration Technologies are part of SAS Institute's Information Delivery Architecture (IDA), an open and scaleable architecture that allows for rapid development of end-to-end information delivery systems that meet user needs and are easy to adapt as those needs change. IDA ensures that new technologies such as Enterprise Integration Technologies build upon an organisation's existing SAS software investment, rather than forcing an organisation to rebuild its existing development from scratch in order to exploit new SAS Institute technology.