The 2008 SAS Institute Partner Alliance Kick-Off was held on 15 February with an international Web cast to SAS partners and employees around the world.
In the words of Dr Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS, the SAS corporate objective is to be "the first company people call when they need to solve business problems". In line with this vision, the Web cast, presented by Russ Cobb, Vice President of Alliances and Product Marketing at SAS, highlighted the successes of SAS across the world for 2007 and outlined the organisation's strategy for 2008.
The major focus for the year going forward will be around value, and giving partners the tools to enable them to provide specific, relevant solutions to meet the specific needs of the customer through innovative ideas for the partner environment. SAS will also focus on providing a complete view of business solutions, including strategy, business processes, people and technology, as well as analytical competencies across components.
"The past year was a highly successful one for SAS, with benchmarks such as the company reaching the $2 billion revenue mark for the first time and the EMEA region almost doubling its revenue," says Murray de Villers, GM of Alliances at SAS South Africa. "This success has been due in a large part to our partners, and we expect 2008 to continue this trend."
According to Gartner, business analytics is set to become far more prevalent than ever before. In fact, the analyst firm has estimated that by 2010, business intelligence analytics will be a $70 billion market, with the majority of this revenue coming from the software side. SAS, as the dominant force in the analytics arena, is perfectly poised to take full advantage of this predicted surge, and intends for its Alliance partners to play an integral role in future growth.
To this end, SAS will be providing ever-greater levels of support and tools to members of the Partner Alliance, including integration and a global strategy for partners and enhanced communication through channels such as PartnerNet. This strategy will be incorporated locally into the South African Partner Alliance.
"Internationally SAS has set some great challenges and goals for the Alliance, and we look forward to stepping up to meet them. For us, the Alliance is all about ensuring partner-driven success," De Villiers concludes.
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