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SAS to offer R integration to support analytical innovation

Customers get best of both worlds: fully supported, scalable and proven power of SAS®, flexibility of open-source R for emerging methods 

23 March 2009 -  SAS, the leader in business analytics, is expanding analytical options for its customers with a new interface to R open-source statistical software. SAS’ initial integration with R will be included in SAS/IML ® Studio 3.2 (formerly SAS Stat Studio) scheduled for summer 2009.

SAS has always focused on helping customers use analytical software to find answers, uncover insights and make smarter business decisions. The company’s 33 years of uninterrupted growth attest to the importance of listening to customers and serving their changing needs.

Many organisations relying on SAS also use R, which offers some a way to experiment with new, cutting-edge methods. Others find R’s open-source nature appealing. For most, both SAS and R are important tools for discovering fact-based answers.


SAS responds to customers' needs

SAS has heard its customers and will offer new ways for them to get answers faster, using both SAS and R. By enabling users to submit R code from within the SAS environment, developers of statistical models will have more options to derive value from data -- using the breadth of methods already available in SAS, while experimenting with some new methods not yet implemented in SAS via the R interface.

"Our researchers are currently using SAS/IML to investigate sleep apnea and microarray data using ridge regression and wavelets," said Dr. Patricia Cerrito, PhD, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Louisville. "Using R in SAS will substantially facilitate this work."

SAS leads the enterprise software market in business analytics, producing high-quality analytical software that includes the latest methods that appeal to broad audiences of users. SAS’ complete business analytics portfolio includes statistics, predictive modeling and text analytics, forecasting and econometrics, visualisation, optimisation, data integration and reporting.

“It is no secret that SAS has been working on interfacing with R,” said Anne Milley, SAS’ Senior Director of Technology Product Marketing. “SAS and R are here to stay, and as organisations work to harness the full potential of their data, an expanded set of analytics options can only help.”


SAS is known for excellence in analytical software

Thousands of businesses, governments and academic institutions trust SAS to provide proven and fully supported analytical software refined over years of customer application and feedback. SAS strives to provide customers with the best means to achieve accurate and reliable results using many analysis methods.

”Now customers have even more options available to them via the integration with R,” said Milley. “SAS is committed to providing excellent software for statistics and advanced analytics and we continue implementing up-to-date methods.”

The interface, which will run on the Windows platform, lets users quickly and easily apply methods in R while working in SAS. SAS/IML customers can obtain the new capability at no additional cost.

Today’s announcement came at SAS Global Forum, the largest annual SAS users group conference, attended by more than 3,000 business and IT users of SAS software and solutions.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know® .

For further information, please contact the team at the SAS press office on:
Tel: +44 (0) 1628 490490
e-mail saspressoffice@suk.sas.com
For more information on SAS, please visit www.sas.com/uk

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