BOSTON, 25 settembre 2006 – At the Forecasting Summit, SAS, the leader in business intelligence, announced strong cross-industry market adoption of SAS Forecast Server. The company dominates the business forecasting market, having more than 6,500 licenses with more than 4,000 unique customers globally for its forecasting solutions. Many of these companies adopted SAS Forecast Server soon after its November 2005 introduction. Adoption has increased throughout 2006 as companies recognized the value of automating large numbers of forecasts and improving forecast accuracy.

SAS Forecast Server is addressing business needs in financial services, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing and retail, as well as many other industries ranging from communications to utilities.

With new patent-pending functionality, SAS Forecast Server helps companies save money and time by improving the overall planning process – including operational, tactical and strategic levels – by delivering better forecasts. This latest forecasting offering from SAS includes large-scale, automated forecasting and time series mining to uncover time-related patterns and trends. Its interactive user interface eases forecasting, putting sophisticated technology into the hands of even novice forecasters.

“SAS Forecast Server has been extremely popular because it’s the only forecasting software that provides large-scale automation,” said Mike Gilliland, Product Marketing Manager at SAS. “The automation allows analysts to focus efforts on high-value forecasts. With more attention on the most important business decisions, SAS Forecast Server customers can achieve a competitive advantage in customer service and resource management, while using less management time in the process.”

Waitrose, the food shops of the John Lewis Partnership in the United Kingdom, selected SAS forecasting software to better manage its supply chain. SAS forecasting software, built on the SAS®9 Enterprise Intelligence Platform, will help Waitrose forecast demand for its products based not only on the history of each item, but also on any number of causal variables, events or holidays.

“SAS’ event forecasting enables us to incorporate knowledge about our business into the forecasting process and enables us to forecast the demand for thousands of items quickly and accurately,” said Rob Thompson, Head of Supply Chain at Waitrose. “We anticipate that the return on investment we will achieve on reduced wastage and increased revenues will be significant.”

New adopters of SAS Forecast Server include Capital Card Services, Wells Fargo Bank, RJ Reynolds, DaimlerChrysler, JC Penney, Mark’s Work Wearhouse, AB Kvallstidningen Expressen, Marriott International, Six Continents Hotels, North-West University, Time, Tribune Co., UPC Broadband and Union Pacific Railroad.

SAS delivers intelligence through the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, integrating individual technology components in the existing IT infrastructure into a single, unified system. The result is an information flow that transcends organizational silos, diverse computing platforms and niche tools – and delivers new insights that drive value for an organization.