SAS Joins IBM's Service-Oriented Architecture Community

IBM SOA Specialty program helps SAS deliver business agility and flexibility to customers

CARY, NC  (Oct. 11, 2006)  –  SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today announced its acceptance into the IBM SOA Specialty program after successfully completing IBM’s rigorous SOA technical and business requirements.  This achievement enables the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform to integrate with the IBM SOA Foundation, which is a single, open set of software, best practices and patterns that provide users with what they need to get started with SOA.  

SOA is a software approach that takes various tasks and organizes them into interoperable, standards-based services.  Earlier this year SAS stated it would continue enhancing its SOA-based Enterprise Intelligence Platform and solutions – which includes data integration, intelligence storage, analytics and business intelligence – by delivering collections of services that fully meet customer needs.  By qualifying for the IBM SOA Specialty, SAS is joining a community of partners that will make it easier for customers to find and deploy more SOA-based solutions.  “This announcement reinforces SAS’ commitment to helping our customers capitalize on the value of SOA without difficulty,” said Keith Collins, Chief Technology Officer at SAS.  “SOA enables IT departments to decrease the cost and time needed to update and maintain corporate systems, which is why it’s important for SAS to be SOA-compliant.” 

In March of this year, IBM announced the IBM SOA Specialty in the PartnerWorld for Industry Networks, which provides technical enablement and a skills-building roadmap for partners who want to access the growing SOA market opportunity. For those business partners who achieve key milestones the Specialty will also provide SOA-specific marketing and sales benefits such as SOA Connection Events to meet directly with IBM SOA Sales specialists and discounted print advertising and telemarketing. IBM Sales Connections, a consultative service in the PartnerWorld Industry Networks, helps business partners close SOA deals quickly by connecting them with the relevant IBM SOA and local field sales team. 

“SOA is an increasingly important architectural requirement in the public sector market because of the flexibility it provides,” said Sandy Carter, vice president, SOA and WebSphere, IBM Software Group.  “As a member of the IBM SOA Specialty, SAS is making it easier for organizations to interact with SAS’ business intelligence applications through the IBM WebSphere MQ interface, which will deliver higher system flexibility and agility within IT departments.” 

Through web services and message oriented middleware, the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform can easily integrate with a service oriented architecture to bring added value and improved performance to any SOA fabric.  This level of integration allows business managers to quickly implement technology they need and deploy solutions required to support their business processes.  In addition, SAS can interoperate with third-party services by calling out from its platform or solutions as appropriate.  

About IBM

With 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate, IBM is the world’s largest information technology company.  IBM is a leading provider of innovative solutions and is dedicated to helping organizations, business partners and developers leverage innovation that matters.  The company offers a host of cross-industry and industry-specific solutions designed to meet the needs of organizations of all sizes.  For more information please visit www.ibm.com/soa

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