Milano, 27 febbraio 2007 – SAS, the leader in business intelligence, announced today that it is positioned in the Visionary quadrant in Gartner Inc.’s latest Marketing Resource Management Magic Quadrant.

In 2006, SAS bolstered its existing marketing resource management (MRM) capabilities with the acquisition of Veridiem. In addition to integrating Veridiem into the SAS® Customer Intelligence suite of marketing solutions SAS also introduced several new MRM modules including SAS for Marketing Performance Management and updates to its financial management modules.

SAS’ marketing resource management capabilities are part of SAS’ broader customer intelligence suite of solutions. SAS’ customer intelligence solutions span campaign management, cross-sell/up-sell, customer retention, customer segmentation, e-mail marketing, event-driven marketing, campaign optimization, marketing mix analysis, marketing performance management and Web analytics. SAS provides industry-specific solutions for the retail, financial, insurance, life sciences, pharmaceutical, healthcare, manufacturing, communications, entertainment and government sectors.

"SAS' ability to combine its analytical and data strengths with a focus on delivering these types of marketing metrics will significantly help organizations understand their marketing effectiveness and ROI at great detail," said Dan Thorpe, Senior Vice President and Director of Wachovia's Customer Analysis, Research & Targeting Statistics and Modeling group. "Wachovia began focusing on Marketing Mix Modeling three years ago, and we have seen substantial returns on our efforts. With SAS' help, we have discovered non-intuitive learnings that could not have been learned or validated otherwise. In fact, our latest modeling efforts have been used to drive Wachovia's 2007 advertising spend."

Other customers using SAS for customer intelligence around the world include The AA, Barclays, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, dunnhumby, Harrah’s Entertainment, Loyalty Management UK, Northern Tool and Equipment, U.S. Bank, Wolters Kluwer and the World Wildlife Fund.

“SAS’ analytical approach to MRM will have a much greater financial impact on a marketing organization due to its focus on both MRM efficiency and effectiveness,” said Jim Davis, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for SAS. “Marketers will be able to improve planning, budgeting and reporting across their portfolio of activities by leveraging the specific optimization capabilities of SAS Customer Intelligence. Marketing managers will be more accountable by ensuring that existing resources are allocated to maximize financial results and achieve the strategic goals of the organization.”

About the Magic Quadrant
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted February 21, 2007, by Gartner Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.