HONG KONG, PRC, Dec. 15, 2005 -- SAS Institute, the world's largest privately held business intelligence company, is ranked by Gartner as the No. 1 business intelligence vendor in Asia Pacific with 17.5 percent share of revenue.

This report follows a similar report Gartner issued on the worldwide BI software market, which confirmed SAS' position as a leading global BI vendor with 15.8 percent of the BI market share. The earlier report from Gartner also highlighted the worldwide growth of the BI market, which increased 12 percent from slightly less than US$1.9 billion in 2003 to US$2.1 billion in 2004.

"We believe these Gartner reports confirm two things: the growing demand for BI solutions and SAS' worldwide BI leadership," said Phillip Beniac, president of SAS Asia Pacific. "Customers are realizing how critical it is to move beyond traditional BI tools like query and reporting and to standardize their BI tools on a common platform. As the only vendor that completely integrates data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications, SAS is well-equipped to meet the growing need for reliable data and for improved total cost of ownership, while, at the same time, meeting the company's own double-digit growth targets."

"SAS has a track record of nearly three decades of customer-driven growth and we have achieved 20 percent revenue growth in Asia Pacific last year. In 2005, some of the new license adoptions in Hong Kong on SAS(R)9 include Li & Fung (Retailing), Hong Kong Dragon Airlines, Bank of China Group Insurance, Securities & Futures Commission, and more," said Edvan Chan, general manager, SAS Hong Kong & South China.

SAS(R) Enterprise BI Server, a major component of the SAS(R)9 Enterprise Intelligence Platform, is an integral factor of SAS' growth in the BI space. SAS Enterprise BI Server provides a suite of BI functions including reporting, query and analysis, OLAP, integrated analytics, visualization, and integration with Microsoft Office environments.

With over 6,000 customers and more than 1,000 employees across 14 countries in Asia Pacific, SAS leads the market with its SAS(R)9 Enterprise Intelligence Platform and its business solution applications.