About SAS
SAS is the leader in analytics.
Giving you The Power to Know®
Through innovative software and services, SAS empowers and inspires customers around the world to transform data into intelligence.
40+ years of analytics innovation
SAS is a trusted analytics powerhouse for organizations seeking immediate value from their data. A deep bench of analytics solutions and broad industry knowledge keep our customers coming back and feeling confident. With SAS®, you can discover insights from your data and make sense of it all. Identify what’s working and fix what isn’t. Make more intelligent decisions. And drive relevant change.
We’ve been applying analytics to the toughest business problems for decades. With SAS, you get solutions built on a powerful analytics platform – and millions of lessons learned.
Number of Countries Installed
SAS has customers in 147 countries.
Total Worldwide Customer Sites
Our software is installed at more than 83,000 business, government and university sites.
Fortune Global 500® Customers
96 of the top 100 companies on the 2017 Fortune Global 500® are SAS customers.
Worldwide Employees
14,328 total employees
Breakdown by Geography
United States: 7,156
World Headquarters (Cary, NC): 5,753
Canada: 328
Latin America: 491
Europe, Middle East and Africa: 3,723
Asia Pacific: 2,630
Reinvestment in R&D
2017 R&D investment: 26% of revenue
It started with a question. Is there a better way to analyze data? Our founders answered that question, but didn’t stop there. The innovative environment at North Carolina State University challenged these bold minds to keep questioning. What is the global potential for transforming data into intelligence? Who else might benefit from using our new technology? With the answers to these questions presenting limitless opportunities, our company was born. Explore each era of our history.
How SAS began
In 1966, vast amounts of agricultural data were being collected through USDA grants – but no computerized statistics program existed to analyze the findings. A consortium of eight universities came together under a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to solve that problem. The resulting program, the Statistical Analysis System, gave SAS both the basis for its name and its corporate beginnings.
Academic roots and early leadership
North Carolina State University, located in Raleigh, NC, became the leader in the consortium because it had access to a more powerful mainframe computer. NCSU faculty members Jim Goodnight and Jim Barr emerged as project leaders. Barr created the architecture and Goodnight implemented new features that expanded the system’s capabilities. When NIH discontinued funding in 1972, the consortium agreed to fund the project, allowing NCSU to continue supporting their statistical analysis needs.
Expanding team and clientele
Over the next few years, SAS software was licensed by pharmaceuticals, insurance companies and banks, as well as the academic community. Jane Helwig, a Statistics Department employee at NCSU, joined the project as documentation writer, and John Sall, a graduate student and programmer, rounded out the core team. More than 300 people attended the first SAS users conference in 1976. With a growing customer base that already numbered close to 100 academic, government and corporate entities, it was evident that success as an independent operation was possible.
Incorporation in 1976
Goodnight, Barr, Helwig and Sall left NCSU and formed SAS Institute Inc., a private company devoted to the maintenance and further development of SAS. The company was incorporated in March 1976, and opened for business July 1 at 2806 Hillsborough St., across from the university. As the staff grew, so did the list of customers. By 1978 there were 21 employees and 600 SAS customer sites. The primary focus, then and now, continues to be on meeting customer needs.
Building the foundation
In 1976 computers filled rooms the size of small houses, and programs and data were stored on punch cards. Base SAS, consisting of about 300,000 lines of code, would produce about 150 boxes of cards – a stack more than 40 feet high. Laid end to end, the boxes of cards would stretch more than 180 feet.
First outstanding software recognition
Within a year of incorporation, SAS was recognized for its outstanding software when Datamation magazine named the company to the DataPro Software Honor Roll. It continued to appear on that list for the next three years.
Every job is everyone’s job
At the young start-up company, the business of doing business was everyone’s job. Employees shared a variety of responsibilities, including answering technical support phone calls, teaching classes, and telemarketing and selling new service agreements. Barr, Goodnight and Sall continued writing code as the SAS staff grew.
Focus on the customer
As the staff grew, so did the list of customers, and by 1978 there were 21 employees and 600 SAS customer sites. From the beginning, SAS’ primary focus was to meet customer needs. At every point of contact with customers, a conscious effort was made to listen to customers and respond to the unique needs of each one.
Reaching outside the US
In 1979, SAS granted its first overseas software license to Databank of New Zealand, and SAS software was adapted to run under IBM’s VM/CMS system. In 1980, SAS broke new ground with the release of SAS/GRAPH® for presentation graphics and SAS/ETS® for econometric and time series analysis. Our first subsidiary, SAS Software Limited in the United Kingdom, also opened.
A corporate culture begins
Recognizing employees for their value to the company was part of the early SAS heritage. People who worked for the company during the days on Hillsborough Street tell stories of piling into Goodnight’s station wagon and going down the street for pizza - with SAS picking up the tab - whenever the company added another 100 customer sites to the list.
New headquarters in 1980
In 1980, SAS’ staff of 20 moved from Raleigh to its present headquarters in Cary, NC. Here, the company’s now famous culture continued to thrive. A flexible work environment and perks such as free M&M’s and breakfast goodies highlighted the company’s belief in every employee’s value.
Expanding frontiers
Inc. magazine named SAS one of the fastest-growing companies in America for five consecutive years. The new headquarters campus grew from one building with offices for 50 employees to 18 buildings, including a training center, publications warehouse and video studio. SAS also expanded its geographic boundaries, opening new offices on four continents and its first US regional sales offices. By the end of the decade, SAS had nearly 1,500 employees worldwide.
New operating systems, new challenges
Dramatic changes were taking place in the computer industry, with new operating systems and platforms placing greater demands on software developers. SAS adapted its software to operate on IBM’s Disk Operating System (DOS). Then the company completely rewrote a large part of its software code to give it more portability, and the door to mini-computers was opened.
Multivendor architecture
When PCs came out in the mid ’80s, users wanted to run SAS on them. So SAS was rewritten once again, this time in the popular C language. But keeping pace wasn’t enough. SAS broke new ground in the industry, creating a software architecture that would run across all platforms – what the company is known for today. SAS then introduced a micro-to-mainframe link, allowing customers to link data stored on mainframes to the programs running on their PCs.
More approachable look and feel
SAS transformed its numbers-centric format for displaying data, and a more user-friendly approach was adopted that mirrored the graphical user interfaces of the Macintosh and Windows environments. SAS software included enhanced graphics and powerful data modeling tools to visualize analytical results. Late in the decade, the company also released JMP®, its first packaged statistical program for the increasingly popular Macintosh computer.
Industry differentiation
SAS was recognized for technological excellence with awards from Datamation, Software News, Software Business Review, InformationWeek and other industry publications. The company was also in a unique position to give customers the ability to make sense out of mountains of data and make decisions based on those discoveries, bringing them the competitive advantage they were seeking.
Corporate culture
For SAS, breaking new ground was not limited to technology. The company opened its first on-site childcare center in 1981, at a time when corporate-sponsored daycare was almost unheard of. A recreation and fitness center, health care center and onsite café followed, further enhancing a culture responsive to an employee’s total well-being. These services garnered SAS the first of many "great place to work for" awards.
Mining the opportunities
During the 1990s, SAS would grow its workforce to more than 7,000 people around the world, with employees on every continent, in every major US city and in the capitals of international commerce.
Changing the way software is sold
Sales efforts moved away from telemarketing to a direct sales force with a focus on geographic territories. The company introduced its first vertical sales group with the release of clinical software for the pharmaceutical industry. As the demand grew for solutions designed to meet specific business needs across industries, the Business Solutions division was established, responsible for solutions such as SAS Financial Management and SAS Human Capital Management.
New focus on education
The company moved into new territory by developing online curriculum resources for the classroom. Curriculum Pathways® focuses on materials difficult to convey through conventional teaching methods. The software enables teachers to keep students engaged and learning while fostering technology use in the classroom.
Real support for decision making
SAS set itself apart as a provider of decision-support software with expanded capabilities in areas such as guided data analysis and clinical trials analysis and reporting. The company introduced software for building customized executive information systems (EIS). As the internet became more vital to the business world, SAS brought web-enabled capabilities to its software, allowing customers to use SAS solutions as a competitive advantage.
Understanding the customer
With its powerful data mining capabilities, SAS was in a position to take the lead in an area that was more in demand than virtually any other business software offering available – customer relationship management. Web-enabled with new e-intelligence solutions, SAS was at the cutting edge of the business software industry.
Recognition rolling in
Recognition for having quality software products continued to come from many sources around the world. In addition, the US Food and Drug Administration recognized the integrity of SAS software by selecting SAS technology as the standard for new drug applications. SAS also continued to be recognized as a great place to work, receiving awards from Fortune magazine among many others, along with prominent media coverage in the US, Europe and Australia.
Into the 21st century
SAS celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2001, right on the heels of the turn of the millennium and the Y2K frenzy that seemed to engulf the world of technology. With a new logo and tagline – THE POWER TO KNOW® – in place, SAS set off to increase its visibility and global recognition.
Decade of best places to work
SAS Australia was the first SAS office outside the US to be recognized as a great place to work in 1999. Since then, the list has expanded to include SAS offices in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Portugal, Finland, China, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Sweden – the latter three named the No. 1 best place to work in 2010 and in years past. In the United States, SAS has been named one of Fortune magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For list every year since 1998, being named No. 1 on the list in 2010 and 2011. This consistent performance earned the company a place as one of 22 members of the "Hall of Fame," introduced in 2005.
Information Evolution Model
SAS introduced the Information Evolution Model (IEM) in 2003. The IEM describes how well a company manages information as a strategic corporate asset. By understanding and following the IEM, companies can gain better insights into their people, processes, culture and infrastructure. The model continues to resonate with executive audiences.
World events drove development
The governance and regulatory compliance requirements set forth in Basel II in Europe and the USA Patriot Act led to a high demand for software products that could help financial institutions manage risk and combat money laundering and fraud. SAS answered those needs with solutions that achieved industry and analyst recognition, and further solidified SAS’ position as a leading provider of solutions for the financial sector. In the retail sector, SAS acquired Marketmax, and in risk management, it acquired Risk Advisory – both in 2003.
Reaching the C-suite
SAS effectively targeted users and executives through Analytics Experience, and the annual data mining and forecasting series conferences, along with numerous executive conferences throughout the world and industry sectors. The largest annual user’s conference, SAS Global Forum, continues to draw thousands of users.
Globalization
The year 2007 ushered in a new era of globalization for SAS. With operations centralized at SAS world headquarters in Cary, NC, the company focused on consistent global programs in areas such as sales strategy, education, publications, marketing and communications. Global councils and summits formed, creating opportunities for collaboration that established SAS as a single, global entity.
Embracing the web 2.0 generation
SAS embraces evolving social media by participating in continuous, online dialogue in respective communities. By early 2008 the company had more than 300 internal bloggers, including nearly 20 executives. Event-based blogging appeared on the scene with the 2007 SAS Global Forum. The company’s external blogsite was promoted for the first time during that conference, as was a new external online community. Podcasts and webcasts are available daily, and SAS’ own YouTube channel is an effective video-sharing website.
Committed to corporate sustainability
Sustainability has remained a top priority with SAS because it's the right thing to do and it delivers tremendous business value. In addition to employee engagement practices, SAS has made great progress in reducing its environmental footprint. Several construction projects at SAS offices around the world utilize low-environmental-impact design principles. SAS has attained Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for facilities at its global headquarters.
A new type of deployment for SAS® solutions
In 2000, CEO Jim Goodnight created an Application Service Provider group to deploy solutions in line with market demand for what eventually became solutions delivered via the web. Later called SAS Solutions OnDemand, the group evolved into the enterprise hosting organization at SAS that provides consulting services for solutions hosted by SAS, at partner data centers – using SAS infrastructure – or at customer sites via remotely managed software and services.
Ushering in the Internet of Things
In the 2010s, home security systems, cars, even toasters, are generating big data. Who better to make sense of all the incoming IoT data for better decision making than SAS? The company stepped up development efforts in data management, event stream processing, data visualization, analytics and in-memory distributed processing to create a modern analytics infrastructure where mobile, Hadoop and the cloud converge. It’s still about predictive analytics and data discovery, but the difference now is the speed at which it is all happening.
Growing to meet customers’ needs
SAS software is now installed at more than 80,000 business, government and university sites as the company continues to focus on serving its many customers. SAS has offices in more than 50 countries, employing more than 14,000 people. SAS world headquarters has grown to 24 buildings on its 300-acre campus. Building Q opened in 2014, and a nine-story office building, with training and customer areas, is under construction and scheduled for completion in 2019.
Continuing commitment to the environment
SAS expanded the capacity of its solar farm at world headquarters to 2.2 megawatts – enough to power 325 averaged-sized homes. The company achieved LEED Platinum (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for Building C in 2011. Buildings D, T and Q in Cary, and offices in Brazil, Canada and Sweden were also LEED certified.
Embarking on Data for Good initiatives
In 2010, SAS helped the International Organization for Migration (IOM) apply analytics to help millions left homeless by the worst floods in Pakistan’s history. In 2015, SAS again partnered with IOM to hasten disaster recovery when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal. The next year, data scientists from SAS, in partnership with DataKind, explored transportation data from the Boston (US) public schools to shorten school bus rides and reduce costs. Since then, SAS has partnered with numerous organizations to tackle critical issues around education, poverty, health and the environment.
Creating a world-class work environment
SAS’ culture, nurtured at world headquarters, migrated to offices around the world, with many achieving workplace honors. Eight country offices achieved the coveted No. 1 spot on Great Place to Work lists in the first half of this decade: Belgium, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. In 2012 the Great Place to Work Institute ranked SAS No. 1 on the World’s Best Multinational Workplaces list.
Always innovating
“We never have and never will stop innovating.” Those are the words of CEO Jim Goodnight. The decade of the 2010s witnessed the launch of new products such as SAS Visual Analytics, SAS Visual Statistics and SAS In-Memory Statistics for Hadoop, rapidly becoming the analytics platform of choice for the Hadoop open source framework, considered the future of big data. In 2016, the company introduced SAS® Viya®, its new, open analytics platform, and was identified as the only Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Insight Platform Suites report.
Preparing the next generation
SAS’ philanthropic focus have always been on education. In 2014, the company launched SAS Analytics U, a higher-education initiative that includes free SAS software, university partnerships and engagement with user communities. The company’s Curriculum Pathways educational software, offered at no cost, celebrated 3 million users in 2017. SAS launched the SAS Academy for Data Science to develop analytics talent in a hands-on setting using SAS, Hadoop and open source technologies. The company continues to collaborate with graduate and undergraduate programs worldwide, and has helped launch more than 30 master's and undergraduate degrees and 60 certificate programs in analytics and related disciplines.
40 and forward
2016 was a milestone 40-year anniversary for SAS, with several reasons to celebrate the future of analytics. Organizations continue to gather data and need fast, easy ways to analyze it, whether it’s a retailer looking to better understand its customers, a scientist discovering a cure for cancer or a financial institution protecting credit card transactions. As the leader in analytics, that holds many exciting opportunities for SAS and our customers. From Base SAS in the 1970s to SAS Viya today, the company has thrived on innovation and creativity. Just as SAS stepped up to the challenges big data presented over the past four decades, SAS will be at the forefront of technological advances.
