Bloor Research Confirms SAS 9 is a BI Breakthrough

Business Wire, August 23, 2004

CARY, N.C. -- SAS' goal to deliver the first enterprise-class business intelligence platform has been further validated by Bloor Research, one of the world's leading IT analyst and consultancy organizations. The report places the business intelligence leader ahead of the market with its recently launched SAS(R)9 platform that addresses corporate governance and compliance regulations, improves productivity and performance, and reduces the cost of ownership.

The SAS(R)9 solution is designed to eliminate the complexity of business intelligence throughout the organization by focusing on integration and the usability of the interface. Bloor Research acknowledges that, for the first time, users are working from a single platform that provides sophisticated business intelligence capability, as well as data warehousing, data mining, ETL, data cleansing and data profiling.

"There is no other suite of technology on the market that has the breadth of capability that SAS(R)9 can provide, coupled with the unique level of integration that SAS offers," said Bloor Research practice leader, Philip Howard. "Combined with the across-the-board scalability and other features that the platform provides, it is clear that SAS has produced enterprise-class business intelligence that is unmatched in the industry."

Bloor Research also affirms that SAS customers will benefit from the reduced cost of ownership and improved manageability that result from the open standards and the single metadata environment found in SAS' business intelligence solutions.

"SAS(R)9 provides a wide range of different capabilities that have been designed to support the needs of different user communities within the organization, and we can already see the rewards of our unique approach - through both the response from our customers and the industry," said Rob Stephens, director of technology strategy at SAS.

"This is the first such product in this class, and this should give SAS a substantial advantage to move beyond its traditional high-end analytics stronghold to address the general purpose business intelligence market," concluded Howard.

About SAS

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 40,000 sites - including 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 500(R) - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). Visit us at www.sas.com.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. (R) indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright (C) 2004 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.