SAS announces continued strong global growth for business intelligence

SAS, the leader in business intelligence, has announced continued financial and customer success through the third quarter of 2004, with year-to-date revenue growth up 12% over 2003. Driving new business for SAS was the software company's string of key solution launches that leverage the breakthrough capabilities of the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform, unveiled in the first quarter of 2004.

SAS customers continue their rapid adoption of the SAS 9 platform. From retail and financial services to telecommunications, manufacturing and the public sector, a sampling of organisations that have licensed or migrated to SAS 9 include Amazon.com Holdings Inc, American Express International, the US Department of Homeland Security, Celebrity Cruises, Kraft Foods Global and Marriott International, all based in the US; Orange and Pacifica, both of France; BBVA (Spain), Bell Canada, Statistics Norway and Telenor Direkte (Norway). These organisations join more than 9 600 other licensed sites that have already implemented SAS 9.

This week SAS announced the launch of SAS Financial Intelligence, an advanced portfolio of software solutions for the SAS 9 platform that helps organisations achieve more predictive, accurate and timely results from their finance functions. By using SAS Financial Intelligence, the finance department can deliver a comprehensive perspective for performance management and transform itself into a confident, trusted adviser that supplies valuable intelligence to the entire enterprise.

"We believe these strong revenue results reflect a growing recognition that our SAS 9 solutions take customers well beyond the realm of traditional business intelligence and enable them to confidently and proactively drive revenue growth and profitability," said Dr Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS. "To make this possible, the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform provides a powerful foundation for a suite of solutions that supports performance management across the enterprise, something other vendors have failed to deliver."

SAS recently received the following industry accolades:

* Software Magazine ranked SAS number one in its Business Intelligence/Analytics category. Rankings are based on total worldwide 2003 revenues for technology companies with a software component.

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* SAS was chosen as a member of the Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100, an elite group of supply-chain solution providers, consultants and other organisations that are leading the way in transforming supply and demand chains.

* CRM magazine ranked SAS as the CRM market leader in CRM analytics and a market leader in marketing performance management. In addition, Goodnight was inducted into the CRM Hall of Fame, and SAS customer AAA Mid-Atlantic won a CRM Elite award. In the CRM analytics category, SAS was lauded as "the best vendor in terms of predictive analytics" and for having a large customer base that "remains among the most loyal in the category". In the marketing performance management category, SAS was deemed "the most recognisable name in the marketing arena, having parlayed its strength in innovation, data mining and analytics".

* SQL Server Magazine named SAS Enterprise Miner software as the winner of the Best Data Mining Product category in the magazine's first-ever Readers' Choice Awards.

* CMP Media's Intelligent Enterprise magazine named SAS the winner of three individual categories in its seventh annual Readers' Choice Awards for Best IT Products. The magazine's 80 000-plus subscribers chose SAS software as the winner in these categories: Best Data Mining (SAS Enterprise Miner), Best Text Analysis (SAS Text Miner) and Best Predictive Modelling and Planning (SAS/STAT and SAS High-Performance Forecasting). SAS also finished in the runner-up position for Best Web Analytics (SAS Web Analytics).