SAS and Unisys Team to Provide Business Intelligence Solutions On ES7000; UK's Littlewoods plc uses SAS software and Unisys ES7000 to improve online retail operation

Business Wire, July 11, 2001

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

CARY, N.C. & BLUE BELL, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 11, 2001

Alliance deploys mid-to-enterprise scale Data Warehousing and

Enterprise Marketing Automation applications on Intel-based Windows

servers

SAS Institute and Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) today announced a global marketing alliance to develop and deploy industry specific data warehousing, business intelligence and Enterprise Marketing Automation (EMA) solutions on Unisys e-@ction Enterprise Server ES7000 systems.

Additionally, the two companies plan to enter into a cooperative support agreement to provide complete 24/7 support for customers worldwide.

SAS' unparalleled data analysis capabilities, when combined with the capacity and speed of the Unisys ES7000, will give managers tools for uncovering valuable business insights locked in large corporate databases. As a result, they will be able to quickly spot new revenue opportunities and pinpoint global trends to make more effective business decisions. Demonstrating a continuing commitment to provide business critical solutions for clients deploying a Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter environment, SAS and Unisys also will work in conjunction with other solution providers to deliver complete operational and analytical systems for the global Fortune 1000 and beyond.

"We're very excited to work with Unisys to deploy SAS' industry-leading data warehousing and business intelligence solutions on the ES7000," said Graeme Woodley, senior vice president of business development and channel operations at SAS. "Unisys leading edge technology, coupled with their consulting expertise will enable us to jointly deliver outstanding solutions to enterprise and mid-market customers worldwide."

As a part of the marketing alliance, Unisys will open an ES7000 Center of Excellence at SAS corporate headquarters in Cary, North Carolina. The Center of Excellence will be dedicated to optimizing the performance of the SAS System on Unisys systems and providing performance characterization, implementation and sizing guidelines for mutual customers.

"The addition of SAS data warehouse and analytical solutions to the Unisys ES7000 is a significant building block in a solid enterprise-class computing foundation. SAS is the established leader in integrated data warehousing and e-Intelligence and their products will be a key part of Unisys solution portfolio for the ES7000," said Mike Thomas, vice president of global solution partners at Unisys. "The market interest in SAS' solutions on the Unisys Cellular MultiProcessing (CMP) architecture confirms the value of enterprise-class applications on Intel-based Windows servers."

A leading customer of the SAS and Unisys solution is Littlewoods plc, one of the UK's largest and most successful privately held businesses. "With retail presences in home shopping, the high street, and e-commerce, Littlewoods' vision is to become the UK's most admired consumer business," said Alan Williams, director of technical services at Littlewoods. "The performance and scalability of SAS solutions on the Unisys ES7000 will help us realize our goal of providing a world-class infrastructure to meet the ever increasing expectations of our customers in the highly competitive fashion, home and leisure markets. Littlewoods is committed to being at the forefront of developments in e-commerce and interactive customer communications."

"SAS' leadership in data warehousing and business intelligence, coupled with the ES7000's scalability and performance, and leveraging Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 2000 Datacenter Server provides customers with an outstanding business value," said Peter Conway, senior director of Windows.NET server marketing for Microsoft. "This is a great example of an important solution provider taking advantage of the Windows platform to develop solutions that deliver value and choice to customers."

"Unisys' and SAS' support for Intel-based server technologies on the ES7000 provides customers with mainframe-class power at lower industry price points," said Will Swope, vice president of Intel's Solutions Enabling Group. "Intel will continue to work closely with vendors such as Unisys and SAS to provide scalable, reliable and high-performance server technologies for the financial, telecommunications, retail, xSP and public sectors."

The Unisys CMP server architecture, provides an array of computing capabilities - using Microsoft's Windows 2000 Datacenter Edition and Intel(R) Pentium(R) and Itanium(TM) system technologies - required for unprecedented enterprise-class e-business computing. The CMP architecture accommodates up to 32 Pentium(R) III Xeon(TM) 32-bit and/or Intel Itanium(TM) 64-bit processors in the same server, up to 64GB of RAM, and a high-speed cross-bar system design for extremely fast I/O which is critical for data warehousing and advanced business intelligence applications. It provides support for hard partitioning of the system into a variety of computing units ranging from eight four-node partitions to one 32-node partition and combinations in between. This provides the ability to consolidate and manage different types of applications, including business intelligence and operational systems on one system. These advantages enable CMP-based servers to match the performance of many other systems in enterprise-class e-business and other critical applications at industry-standard prices.