Sydney, Australia & Auckland, New Zealand (May. 29, 2007) – According to IDC's Asia/Pacific Semiannual Software Tracker, 1Q07, May 2007, the combined markets of business intelligence, data integration & access and business performance management software in Australia and New Zealand grew by 11.0 per cent – 2006 over 2005. Within this market, SAS grew by 19.7 per cent over the same time period.

Michael Belakhov, General Manager, SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence Platform for Australia and New Zealand, said, “The research illustrates the support of the SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence Platform in the local market. It is this approach that gives our customers a genuine single source of the truth across all parts of their business, unrivalled audit ability and the means of corporate governance.

“Increasingly, the market understands that legacy query and reporting tools are unable to deliver against today’s demanding standards. Legacy query and reporting vendors have been promising a Business Intelligence platform for some five years now, however, the customers’ experience has not borne this out. This is one of the many reasons that we see our competitors’ customers increasingly moving to the SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence Platform.”

Congratulating staff members, Gordon Clubb, Managing Director, SAS Australia and New Zealand, reflected that the local company had gone from not being recognised in the traditional Business Intelligence market only four years ago to clear market leader today.

He told his staff, “Take a moment to congratulate yourselves on these numbers. As a team and as individuals you can be very proud of what you have achieved.” Clubb also stated that the Business Intelligence world was rapidly changing as organisations look to turn data into industry leading innovation and Intelligence – and that SAS was leading this change.

Ullrich Loeffler, IDC's Analyst for Business Intelligence software in Australia and New Zealand, said, “SAS’s growth can be largely attributed to the company’s data integration and access software offering. Sales for these products grew by 55.7 per cent year-on-year between 2005 and 2006. The research findings also show Business Performance Management and Financial Analytics products grew by 139.7 per cent over the same time period.”

SAS business intelligence tools are used by a number of leading public and private sector enterprises in Australia and New Zealand including, the Australian Taxation Office, Accident Compensation Corporation, Commonwealth Bank, Australian Bureau of Statistics, BankWest, Ogilvy Worldwide, NZ Ministry of Social Development, Virgin Money, Bank of Queensland, ANZ National Bank and several leading universities and research institutes.

MBF Australia Limited (MBF) is a recently won new customer for SAS and Paul Ormond-James, Head of MBF Group Intelligence and The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) ANZ President, said IDC’s findings came as no surprise to him, adding, “I was very impressed by the considerable investment of time and people that SAS made into understanding where we wanted to go. SAS recognised that the better use of BI within MBF enriches our Finance function to add increased value to the business and drive important cultural change towards empowering our people at all levels; not just the senior executives. SAS worked with us to deliver a cost effective enterprise tailored business solution.”

SOURCE – IDC’s Asia/Pacific Semiannual Tracker. 1Q07, May 2007
 

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SAS is the leader in business intelligence and analytical software and services. Customers at 43,000 sites use SAS software to improve performance through insight from data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products and processes. Only SAS offers leading data integration, storage, analytics and business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know®