Enterprise users worldwide embrace SAS® Business Intelligence solutions

SAS® Enterprise BI Server's additional enhancements, tailored solutions to give customers unprecedented decision-making abilities

22 June 2005 -  SAS, the leader in business intelligence and the world's largest privately held software company, continues to receive strong industry and user validation of its newly enhanced SAS^® Enterprise BI Server. Already the most comprehensive BI offering on the market, SAS Enterprise BI Server offers considerably more breadth and depth than conventional BI vendors' products.

SAS today also announced that SAS Enterprise BI Server will receive additional enhancements this year, further simplifying information access so enterprise users can make better decisions faster. These enhancements include: greatly enhanced drag-and-drop report building capabilities; report usage tracking and archiving; time-based filters and calculations; new support for Microsoft PowerPoint in addition to other Microsoft Office applications; stronger focus on integration with ESRI GIS mapping and visualisation capabilities that allow data to be identified and extracted via hot-spotted graphical interfaces.

"SAS Enterprise BI Server provides what no other conventional BI company on earth can offer – customised interfaces that create fast and simple reporting capabilities, built on the industry's most comprehensive and extensive BI platform," said Dr. Jim Goodnight, SAS CEO. "SAS has gone to great lengths to focus our efforts on meeting the needs of different users, including non-technical users, business analysts and IT managers. We are pleased that more and more organisations around the world are turning to SAS for true business intelligence solutions."

The industry welcome SAS^® Business Intelligence integration, ease-of-use
Many industry analysts and SAS customers confirm that SAS' presence in the business intelligence software industry is strong and growing. Customers worldwide have responded favorably to the business benefits that come from integrating analytics and data management with conventional BI tools.

"Nobody has as wide a range of business intelligence solutions to offer their customers as SAS. Most vendors are struggling toward the fully integrated set of products based on a single platform that SAS has already reached, and many of them are years away from an integrated solution," said Philip Howard, senior analyst with UK-based Bloor Research. "No other suite of products in the market has the breadth of capability that the SAS Enterprise BI Server can provide. SAS has truly produced an enterprise-class business intelligence platform.

"SAS is beginning to achieve its objective of being recognised as one of the major players in both the BI and ETL spaces, and I have certainly heard that from elsewhere, as well as from SAS itself," Howard continued. "This process looks likely to accelerate as SAS continues to upgrade its capabilities."

Ian Charlesworth, a senior analyst with the Butler Group, said, "SAS Enterprise BI Server lays a strong foundation for customers to build their own BI applications and toolsets, and includes support for a wide range of open standards. SAS has created customised interfaces for customers to access all that functionality, helping to overcome earlier impressions of SAS as a collection of separate tools. SAS includes support for a wide range of open standards, at the back end for data access and data exchange, and at the front end for application development and integration."

Companies worldwide are moving increasingly to the SAS Enterprise BI Server (and SAS BI Server) platforms. Some of these organisations include: Allianz Austria; Volkswagen Servicos S/A; Innovapost Inc.; Banca Del Gottardo; E-Laser; Societe Generale; Qwest Corporation; Sprint Communications Corp.; Telemar; DSB Informatik; Forsakringskassan; GIE Agora; ST Microelectronics; Ugine & ALZ Belgium NV; Scandinavian Airlines Systems; Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa; Telecom Italia S.P.A.; Telstra Corporation; Grundfos A/S; Orange France SA; Nedbank; Fraport AG; MAV Informatica KFT; ICICI Bank Ltd.; DoCoMo Tokai; Korea Telecom; Central Bank of Kuwait; Eskom Information Technology; Pitney Bowes; and Citicorp Credit Services Inc.

SAS Enterprise BI Server delivers an integrated and comprehensive suite of BI capabilities – including reporting, query and analysis; OLAP; integrated analytics; visualisation; and Microsoft Office integration – all using consistent metadata across the suite. Using targeted BI interfaces that support individual needs, the SAS Enterprise BI Server empowers all information producers and consumers.

SAS provides real-world scenarios for potential customers
SAS works closely with customers to monitor common scenarios. These scenarios chosen reflect the many ways that SAS customers address their data reporting needs. The SAS Enterprise Excellence Center (EEC) provides a reference architecture and high-end performance metrics based on real-world customer scenarios, enabling customers to preview the performance of SAS business intelligence. In one such study, the EEC referenced 300 retail industry users performing standard tasks on real-world scenarios associated with BI reporting, scenarios that can be applied to any industry. This study monitored response time for multiple reporting groups. The average user experienced less than a five-second response time, a half-second response time to log in and out of SAS Enterprise BI Server, and three seconds to navigate within the reports.

Platform Support
SAS is a major player in the BI market; SAS' position is validated by its leadership in supporting 64-bit architectures, on both Windows and UNIX, as well as mainframe support.

Beyond business intelligence
SAS differentiates itself from other conventional BI vendors in the industry by providing unmatched technology and expertise in advanced analytics, data management and tailored solutions for specific industries, such as banking, life sciences and others. SAS takes enterprises Beyond BI ^TM  by integrating analytics that not only supply limited insight and hindsight in the form of historical reports, but predictive analytics that help predict outcomes and allow clearer foresight. With these capabilities, SAS offers users at any level immediate access to cleansed and reliable data, through targeted user interfaces that match the skill level of the individual user.

About SAS Forum International
Today's announcements came at SAS Forum International 2005 held in Lisbon, Portugal, SAS Forum International is the premier international event for enterprise intelligence. It features more than 200 presentations from 140 organisations representing 40 countries and spanning nine industries. Senior-level executives from Allianz Portugal, Bertelsmann Clubb (Germany), Citicards (US), Nedbank (South Africa), Octopus Cards (China/Hong Kong), and Time Inc. (US) are among the presenters.

About SAS

For further information, please contact the team at the SAS press office on:
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e-mail saspressoffice@suk.sas.com
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