SAS again ranks near top of list for enterprise BI software sales

-- Analyst report recognizes SAS’ growth based on 2004 market share --

CARY, N.C. (Aug. 31, 2005) – SAS, a leader in business intelligence, today announced that Gartner, a leading industry analyst firm, has once again ranked SAS as the No. 2 business intelligence vendor based on 2004 new license sales, with 15.8 percent of the BI market share. Gartner’s latest report* highlights the worldwide growth of the BI market, which has increased 12 percent from slightly less than $1.9 billion in 2003 to $2.1 billion in 2004. The report goes on to state that “growth among the top vendors was generally positive. …”

“We believe the steady growth we have continued to see in the BI market reflects how trusted and valued SAS is to companies requiring a scalable and extensive BI platform,” said Jim Davis, chief marketing officer at SAS. “SAS delivers more than just ‘traditional BI’ like query and reporting to provide a comprehensive selection of technologies ranging from data integration to storage to predictive analytics so that our customers can turn raw data into measurable results that impact their business’ ROI. SAS is a solid and stable organization that invests heavily in R&D with a track record of nearly three decades of customer-driven growth.”

SAS® Enterprise BI Server, a major component of the SAS®9 Intelligence Platform, is a key driver of SAS’ growth in the BI space. The SAS platform empowers users at all levels of an organization with targeted interfaces to support their individual needs and skills. SAS Enterprise BI Server provides a suite of BI functions including reporting, query and analysis, OLAP, integrated analytics, visualization and integration with Microsoft Office environments.