Academic Roots

SAS software was originally written as a by-product of a university project to analyse agricultural data at North Carolina State University in the early 1970‘s. The students concerned found that there was no software in existence that would enable them to manage the data they needed, and to analyse it statistically. They wrote what later became SAS software and quickly found that other students with different projects had similar needs for their data.

Right from the start Dr. James H. Goodnight, one of the original developers, has been enthusiastic to support academic teaching and research using SAS software.

SAS Institute Inc. was formed in 1975 and since then both the software and the company have grown each year to the point now where SAS is the largest independent software company in the world. The same functionality that was the basis of the original software is still vitally important in SAS software today, but now the world of information has changed and has much greater needs.

Adapting to a Changing World - Connectivity Between Computer Systems

While SAS would execute on a personal computer, it quickly became clear that there were practical issues relating to the vast amounts of data that could be easily handled on mainframes, but were impractical at that time on small desktop systems.

By 1986 the basis of SAS’ client-server functionality was in place and SAS on PC-DOS could interact with SAS on large IBM mainframe systems, enabling code generated on the PC to be executed on the mainframe, with results returning to the PC. This seems nothing out of the ordinary today, but it was a major advance at that time.

Since then SAS’ capabilities for client-server operation have been hugely enhanced and since the early 1990's SAS has supported all five of the major client-server modes, as defined by the Gartner Group. Recently, powerful thin client capabilities have been added in the form of SAS Enterprise Guide software.

Adapting to a Changing World - Applications Development

While the statistical solutions generally used for teaching in universities provide a good teaching platform, the sort of analysis capability demanded by commercial business requires that analysis be integrated into larger applications systems and solutions, with a huge variety of means of presentation.

From the late 1980's, SAS has provided the means to integrate its powerful data management, analysis and reporting into custom-built applications. In the early 1990's, extensive object-oriented capabilities were introduced.

For many needs, specific solutions are what is needed and SAS has developed many successful ones, for data mining, financial consolidation, and more recently Balanced Scorecard.

With the growth of the World Wide Web (WWW) applications are now being implemented on the WWW, aided by browser access, and SAS has major functionality in that area.

SAS Academic Initiative: bridging the gap between academia and business

In its 26-year history, SAS has remained true to its academic heritage by working closely with universities and business schools around the world, offering scholarships and donating technology to further education.

The SAS Academic Initiative addresses the marketplace demand for SAS resources by forming Partnerships and Alliances, and working closely with Academic Institutions in an attempt to Bridge the gap between Academia and Business.