CARY, NC (24 settembe 2008) – SAS, the leader in business intelligence and analytics, has been placed by Gartner, Inc. in the Visionaries quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Data Integration report.¹

SAS® Data Integration speeds deployment and eliminates high costs for IT to custom code each integration project. Business and technical problems resulting from inconsistent information disappear, revealing a single vision of crucial customer, project or other data.

"SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server provides high value to enterprises seeking to make the most of their information resources," said Jim Davis, SAS Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. "The data they already have is an incredible asset they can use to lower costs, increase revenue, improve customer or client service, and ensure quality. SAS Data Integration is crucial to maximizing data value."

"Our Data Integration customers frequently cite our service and support, as well as the ability to work in diverse environments, as the key SAS differentiator," added Davis.

Workforce planning
The North Carolina Office of State Personnel (NC OSP) uses SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server to forecast turnover among 90,000 state employees and predict the availability of skilled candidates.

The project, the North Carolina Workforce Outlook and Retirement Knowledge System (NC WORKS), will help the state mitigate a worker shortage when baby boomers – nearly 40 percent of state employees –- retire by 2015.

"North Carolina is a fast-growing state about to become the country’s seventh-largest," said State Personnel Director Thomas H. Wright. "To consistently deliver quality services to our swelling population, now and into the future, our human resource forecasting and planning is critical."

NC WORKS targets nursing at four large mental health facilities. The state will combine Board of Nursing data with nursing school graduation and admission numbers to determine how many potential hires are available to fill empty positions and where they live. It then tailors recruitment and retention efforts. Similar programs are planned for other professional areas.

"NC WORKS will allow state agencies to analyze employee data and plan for staff retirements and other attrition. We capture data from multiple internal and external sources in one repository and apply analytics," said Sharon Howard, Human Resource Consultant, NC OSP. "SAS allows us to keep ahead of trends and make better decisions to meet North Carolina’s workforce requirements."

About the Magic Quadrant
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2008 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.

1 Gartner Research. "Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools" by Ted Friedman, Mark A. Beyer, Andreas Bitterer, September 22, 2008.

SAS
SAS è leader nei software e nei servizi di business analytics ed è la più grande società indipendente nel mercato della business intelligence. Attraverso soluzioni innovative all’interno di un framework integrato e con oltre 45,000 installazioni in tutto il mondo, SAS aiuta le imprese a migliorare le performance e a veicolare valore, aiutando i manager e i knowledge workers a prendere decisioni migliori in tempi brevi. Dal 1976 SAS fornisce alle aziende THE POWER TO KNOW®