12 January 2005 - SAS' vision to be the dominant provider of performance management solutions has been endorsed by Bloor Research, one of the world's leading IT analyst and consultancy organisations, in its latest review of the performance management industry.

The Bloor report outlined the elements required to be part of a performance management solution - business intelligence, performance management applications and analytic applications. These aspects have been validated as SAS strengths over a range of disciplines including financial management, risk management, IT value management and activity-based management.

"The performance management market is relatively immature and most vendors are simply focusing on financial applications and scorecards. Many do not have analytic applications and others cannot even offer such things as activity based management. SAS, on the other hand, is in the enviable position that it has both a depth and breadth of product coverage that other suppliers can only dream about," said Bloor Research practice leader, Philip Howard.

"SAS^®9 has provided SAS with an integrated metadata environment that is pioneering the industry," said John Dalton, chief operating office, SAS UK. "While a focus on strategy, planning and finance provides the core of an effective performance management system, SAS goes beyond the core by providing a practical, holistic view of how every aspect of an organisation including customer behaviour, supplier spending and human capital deployment contributes to performance."

"If you are looking for a supplier that covers a broad spectrum of performance management requirements either now, or in the future, you should start with SAS," concluded Howard.

About SAS
SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 40,000 sites - including 90 percent of the Fortune 500 - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organisations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know^®.