SAS®9 Global Premiere: Experiencing the Breakthrough

John Dalton, SAS director of professional services, explained the thinking behind SAS®9. "It is the most significant release in our 28-year history," he said. "The software is faster, more efficient and easier to use than its predecessors, and can accommodate changing organisational needs without any loss of efficiency. The new platform connects all SAS applications so they work together transparently while also communicating with other data sources and programmes."

This was followed by a live end-to-end demonstration proving the enterprise capabilities of SAS®9. This addressed each step in the SAS Intelligence Value Chain (IVC) - SAS' framework for providing true insight into your business. The audience was taken through a business scenario based on a retail case study of an organisation experiencing an unexpected fall in revenues. By visually following the SAS®9 technology appropriate to each step in the IVC the audience experienced how easy and fast it is to move beyond Business Intelligence to predictive analytics that improve business decisions and deliver measurable value.

The UK event was delighted to welcome legendary Welsh scrum-half Gareth Edwards MBE, one of rugby's undisputed masters of tactical awareness and inspired play. Edwards won three Grand Slams and five Triple Crowns with the men in red and his 'breakthrough' try for the Barbarians against the All Blacks in 1973 is considered the greatest in Rugby Union history.

The event also featured a panel discussion with contributions from Alan Lawson of Butler Group, Paul Frost of AstraZeneca UK, and Steve Morton of Applied Systems, whose closing comment captured the essence of the session: "We live in a joined up world, business requires joined up thinking, and that can only be delivered by joined up technology."

In an interview at the end of the event, Dr. Jim Goodnight, SAS president and CEO, completed the premiere by discussing his vision for SAS and its customers. Dr. Goodnight commented:

"This platform brings a number of significant benefits to customers, reducing their total cost of ownership and increasing return on investment. Over the next several months we'll also be launching new versions of SAS solutions that address specific enterprise and industry needs and that take advantage of this intelligence platform. This allows them to go beyond where they've traditionally been with business intelligence.

"None of our competitors can touch us when it comes to speed, scalability and performance and this isn't just important to IT, it's important to the business too. The impact of SAS®9 will be felt throughout the enterprise."

You can view the SAS®9 global Webcast at: http://www.sas.com/events/webcast/sas9/enter.html