Users Worldwide Embrace SAS Business Intelligence

SAS continues to receive strong industry and user validation for its newly enhanced SAS® Enterprise BI Server. Many industry analysts and SAS customers confirm that SAS’ presence in the business intelligence software industry is strong and growing. Customers worldwide have responded favorably to the business benefits that come from integrating analytics and data management with conventional BI tools.

The buzz about SAS BI
"Nobody has as wide a range of business intelligence solutions to offer their customers as SAS. Most vendors are struggling toward the fully integrated set of products based on a single platform that SAS has already reached, and many of them are years away from an integrated solution," says Philip Howard, senior analyst with UK-based Bloor Research. "No other suite of products in the market has the breadth of capability that the SAS Enterprise BI Server can provide. SAS has truly produced an enterprise-class business intelligence platform.

"SAS is beginning to achieve its objective of being recognized as one of the major players in both the BI and ETL spaces, and I have certainly heard that from elsewhere, as well as from SAS itself," Howard continues. "This process looks likely to accelerate as SAS continues to upgrade its capabilities."

Ian Charlesworth, a senior analyst with the Butler Group, says, "SAS Enterprise BI Server lays a strong foundation for customers to build their own BI applications and toolsets, and includes support for a wide range of open standards. SAS has created customized interfaces for customers to access all that functionality, helping to overcome earlier impressions of SAS as a collection of separate tools. SAS includes support for a wide range of open standards, at the back end for data access and data exchange, and at the front end for application development and integration."

Additional enhancements
SAS will receive additional enhancements this year, further simplifying information access so enterprise users can make better decisions faster. These enhancements include:

• Greatly enhanced drag-and-drop report building capabilities.
• Report usage tracking and archiving.
• Time-based filters and calculations.
• New support for Microsoft PowerPoint (in addition to other Microsoft Office applications).
• Stronger focus on integration with ESRI GIS mapping.
• Visualization capabilities that allow data to be identified and extracted via hot-spotted graphical interfaces.

Companies worldwide are moving increasingly to the SAS Enterprise BI Server (and SAS BI Server) platforms. Some of these organizations include: Allianz Austria; Volkswagen Servicos S/A; Innovapost Inc.; Banca Del Gottardo; E-Laser; Societe Generale; Qwest Corporation; Sprint Communications Corp.; Telemar; DSB Informatik; Forsakringskassan; GIE Agora; ST Microelectronics; Ugine & ALZ Belgium NV; Scandinavian Airlines Systems; Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa; Telecom Italia S.P.A.; Telstra Corporation; Grundfos A/S; Orange France SA; Nedbank; Fraport AG; MAV Informatica KFT; ICICI Bank Ltd.; Korea Telecom; Central Bank of Kuwait; Eskom Information Technology; Pitney Bowes; and Citicorp Credit Services Inc.

SAS Enterprise BI Server delivers an integrated and comprehensive suite of BI capabilities – including reporting, query and analysis; OLAP; integrated analytics; visualization; and Microsoft Office integration – all using consistent metadata across the suite. Using targeted BI interfaces that support individual needs, the SAS Enterprise BI Server empowers all information producers and consumers.

SAS provides real-world scenarios for potential customers
SAS works closely with customers to monitor common scenarios that reflect the many ways that SAS customers address their data reporting needs. The SAS Enterprise Excellence Center (EEC) provides a reference architecture and high-end performance metrics based on these real-world scenarios, enabling customers to preview the performance of SAS business intelligence.

In one such study, the EEC referenced 300 retail industry users performing standard tasks on real-world scenarios associated with BI reporting, scenarios that can be applied to any industry. This study monitored response time for multiple reporting groups. The average user experienced less than a five-second response time, a half-second response time to log in and out of SAS Enterprise BI Server, and three seconds to navigate within the reports.