SAS Unveils Support for Windows XP; Project Mercury Will Enhance a Customer's Ability to Maximize Their Existing IT Investment

Business Wire, May 10, 2002

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 10, 2002

SAS Institute, the leader in business intelligence, today announced its up coming support for 64-bit Windows XP in Version 9, the first release of Project Mercury that will ship to initial customers by the third quarter.

Support for XP was the final step in SAS' strategy for the Windows platform for Version 9. Other key parts of this strategy have already been executed and include certification of SAS software for Windows 2000 Datacenter and Windows 2000 Advanced Server editions. As with all of their core partners, SAS has taken numerous steps to extend its relationship with Microsoft.

"SAS' commitment to our partners has grown significantly over the last number of years" said Jim Davis, chief marketing officer for SAS. "This investment by SAS and our partners benefits our customers through higher performance and greater interoperability, resulting in a higher customer return on investment."

SAS' Version 9 will offer unprecedented performance and scalability in an open, enterprise-class platform. Towards that goal, SAS has been working closely with Microsoft for over two years to optimize SAS for 64-bit Windows systems and was one of the first independent software vendors (ISV) to demonstrate its solution on early versions of the operating system. SAS was also the first ISV to demonstrate its 64-bit Windows-based solutions on a 32-way Unisys ES7000 system.

With a long commitment to ensuring its technologies are open and adaptable for any IT environment, SAS was an initial member of the Web Services Interoperability Organization, dedicated to the development of Web Service vendor-neutral interoperability standards applications. SAS also recently joined Microsoft and Hyperion Software to co-chair the XML for Analysis Committee to help accelerate the development of XML-based standards for BI systems.

"We continue to ensure that our Intelligence Architecture is IT ready," said Don Hatcher, vice president technology strategy. "Microsoft is one of our key partners and we work closely together to ensure a high level of interoperability. We are constantly working with them on development efforts, standards committees and testing to ensure we deliver what our customers expect."

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