Dublin, Ireland, 26 April 2007

New retail solution, latest versions of manufacturing, customer intelligence and other solutions built on enterprise BI platform SAS, the leader in business intelligence (BI), has launched a new software solution for the retail industry and four enhanced versions of existing SAS offerings.

All five solutions are built on the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, a proven technology platform that brings together data integration, predictive analytics, traditional BI reporting and intelligence storage. The SAS platform and the software that runs on it help organisations turn raw data into intelligence, make better business decisions and gain competitive advantage.

"For more than 30 years, SAS has remained committed to customers, reinvesting almost a quarter of revenues - 24 percent in 2006 - in research and development. These five SAS solutions demonstrate SAS' customer-driven innovation," said Michael Kearney, Country Manager, SAS Ireland.

For the retail industry, SAS has unveiled SAS Market Planning and Portfolio Optimisation, a new real-estate planning product that joins the strong line-up of SAS Retail Intelligence Solutions and helps retailers optimise the selection of new store sites via an innovative consumer-centric methodology. By choosing the best site for a new store, retail organisations can more quickly recoup the capital expenses of purchasing and developing real estate, and help ensure profitable operations for years to come. This new solution is a collaborative offering from SAS and its partners ESRI and BearingPoint.

SAS also delivered the latest version of SAS Merchandise Allocation, featuring enhanced usability and scalability. It gives retailers the ability to fulfill demand by facilitating distribution of the right merchandise to the right stores and channels. Allocations created through this solution are based on fashion and seasonal trends; customer demand; and store, channel and location attributes. With SAS Merchandise Allocation, retailers can optimise allocations at the item or store level, increase productivity through automation and reduce distribution costs.

For manufacturing and all service- and distribution-oriented companies, SAS released the latest version of SAS Service Parts Optimisation , a component of the SAS Service Intelligence suite. SAS Service Parts Optimisation helps forecast short-term, new-part and lifecycle demand for spare parts. It calculates optimised inventory and order quantities for parts-distribution systems, helping manufacturers maintain adequate stock levels, maximise response times and improve customer satisfaction. For IT decision makers, SAS launched the latest version of SAS IT Resource Management . This solution is the core component of SAS IT Intelligence , which helps optimise the impact of IT on the organisation and facilitate effective IT governance. It delivers a single platform for combining data from business systems and the entire spectrum of IT infrastructure along with IT service process data and financial data, incorporating wider business goals into IT performance, and reporting the results of IT initiatives throughout the organisation.

And finally, SAS rolled out the latest version of SAS Marketing Resource Management Solutions . This hosted solution, one of several SAS Solutions OnDemand , gives marketers the analytical power of SAS to continuously plan, measure and optimise the impact of marketing activities on overall revenue and profitability. As a hosted solution, SAS manages the solution infrastructure, so companies deploying it need not worry about IT support, deployment, troubleshooting or maintenance. They can instead focus on achieving a higher return on their marketing investments.

SAS new solutions were launched at SAS Global Forum, an annual conference attended by more than 3,500 SAS users from around the world.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Siobhan Molloy/Louise Cassidy	Tel: (01) 676 01 68
Weber Shandwick FCC	or (086) 817 50 66 or (086) 383 57 27

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 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 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^®. Visit our website at www.sas.com/ireland.

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