Why SAS remains a standout company

Amid a frenzy of market consolidations, SAS offers strength in its independence

By Jim Davis

This past year’s rash of software industry consolidation has left fewer and fewer options for businesses looking for enterprise software, particularly software not tied to a specific operational system or database.

And yet the need is greater than ever for technology to sift through huge volumes of data and provide intelligent, reliable information for accurate and timely business decision making.

In his 2001 book Simplicity, business management expert Bill Jensen noted that conservative estimates showed business information worldwide doubling every three years. More recent estimates say this data doubles every 11 months today and is expected to double every few days by 2010.

Facing a flood of data, combined with challenging economic conditions and global competition, businesses have realized they must:

• Join what Cornell University computer science professor and networks expert Jon Kleinberg has described as today’s “revolution in measurement.”
• Embrace math and metrics to compete on analytics, as Babson College professor and author Tom Davenport asserts.
• Adopt what Stanford University’s Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of What Were They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom about Management, calls “evidence-based management.”

While mergers and acquisitions have left fewer software vendors, SAS stands out not only as the last major independent, but as a company unique in many ways:

• SAS leads in the white-hot area of advanced business analytics – data mining, forecasting and optimization – which give companies the ability to make smarter, more precise decisions. Based on math. Based on analysis. Not on a hope and a prayer. And the need for true analytics is only going to get hotter, as noted in a recent IDC projection that the worldwide business analytics software market will grow at a healthy compound annual growth rate of 10.3 percent over the next five years.¹
• SAS combines analytics with the industry’s first and most complete enterprise intelligence platform, combining advanced data integration and data quality with the most powerful analytics on the planet and sharing the results of these analyses through traditional business intelligence reporting tools. No other vendor offers such a complete and seamless platform for true enterprise intelligence.
• SAS was one of nine companies featured in Keith McFarland's best-selling business book The Breakthrough Company , for our relentless focus on serving and satisfying our customers. Not investors. Not Wall Street bankers.

Here at SAS, we just celebrated our revenues surpassing $2 billion for the first time. SAS grew 15 percent in 2007, our 32nd straight year of uninterrupted growth. This strong showing underscores the burgeoning interest in our platform. Our proven technologies, combined with industry-specific expertise and corporate stability, appeal to businesses looking to harness the data flood and embrace analytics.

Because we are an independent vendor, our customers can leverage their existing investments in databases and operational systems. And they can count on SAS to maintain a laser focus on serving their needs, not worrying about stitching together market-share acquisitions or boosting stock prices.

¹ Source: IDC. Worldwide Business Analytics Software 2007-2011 Forecast Update and 2006 Vendor Shares: Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Analytics Applications Forecasts Point. IDC #208699e, excerpt from IDC #208699. Sept 2007.

Bio: Jim Davis is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for SAS.