At Seugi 17, SAS Institute `s annual conference and exhibition held in The Netherlands last week (The Hague, 15 to 18 June), the decision support and data warehousing vendor said it was on track to become a $1 billion software company by the end of the year.
Phil Winters, VP of marketing at SAS Institute EMEA, said the privately-held company had enjoyed 22 years of double-digit growth.
In the current financial year SAS saw 16% growth and annual revenue of $871 million. SAS is one of the top 10 independent software vendors in the world, but Winters said it is the only one that has seen such growth out of its core software business. "Most other software vendors are seeing their major growth coming from consulting and services."
Winters said industry analysts recognise SAS as the leader in the area of information delivery and creation of knowledge. But SAS is seeing leaders in other software areas stepping onto its turf: Oracle (transactional databases), SAP (enterprise resource planning (ERP)) and Microsoft. "These vendors all operate in the areas that help you automate your business, while SAS is the leader in the area that helps you create new knowledge."
Citing a Meta Group report, Winters said most enterprises had finished automating their business, and there is a shift in software spending towards creating knowledge. "Knowledge creation is the next big area where they will be spending their money.
"Traditionally, automation vendors are pushing into the business of information delivery and creation of knowledge," said Winters, "and SAS has developed a strategy to maintain leadership."
Part of this strategy is to work with ERP vendors and come up with tools that enable users to "do something sensible with the massive data that`s coming out of the ERP systems". Last year, SAS released Intelligent Warehousing for R/3, SAP`s ERP solution. "This is the release that we`ve had the most fun with," noted Winters. "We are able to say that within six days we will give you the report you`ve never been able to get from R/3."
In the Hague last week, SAS announced support for another major ERP software - Baan. The new access engine for Baan ERP is part of Version 8 of The SAS System, due in September, which according to Winters is "the biggest software release in SAS`s history".
SAS also used its annual user conference to announce new knowledge-based tools in the areas of customer relationship management. The first two tailored solutions available now will enable people to do cross selling or fraud detection, while further solutions will follow later this year.
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