CARY, N.C., Aug. 11, 2005 -- SAS today announced that for the third consecutive year it has been recognized by IDC as the revenue leader in marketing automation software. The most recent IDC study ("Worldwide Marketing and Sales Automation Applications 2004 Vendor Shares: A Rising Tide", IDC #33661, July 2005) examines the marketing and sales automation applications market for 2002-2004. The study lists SAS' marketing automation revenue at $149.1 million, now capturing a 9.1 percent market share.

"SAS' success in this sector is in no small part the result of a fundamentally analytic orientation that focuses on delivering actionable customer intelligence," said Robert Blumstein, research director, CRM Analytics and Marketing Applications at IDC. "SAS has continued to lead in marketing automation based on a mantra of optimization coupled with scalability derived from its analytic DNA. The careful analysis and prediction that SAS Marketing Automation and SAS Marketing Optimization provide marketers gives them the guidance to adjust their programs and challenge both internal benchmarks and external competition."

"For the third year in a row SAS is the revenue leader for marketing automation applications. This demonstrates the market's trust in SAS' technological leadership and ability to deliver rapid ROI," said Jim Davis, chief marketing officer at SAS. "The release of new versions of SAS Marketing Automation and SAS Marketing Optimization combined with the continuous evolution of the SAS(R)9 (http://www.sas.com/software/sas9/index.html) Enterprise Intelligence Platform - which makes SAS the only vendor to provide marketing automation and business intelligence on a unified and highly extensible enterprise-class platform - ensure our continued momentum in this market."

The IDC report defines marketing automation as software applications that automate a wide range of individual and collaborative activities associated with the various dimensions of the marketing process. These dimensions include the following: ad management/placement, lead qualification/distribution, brand management, list management, campaign execution, marketing resource management, campaign planning and management, media and analyst relations, collateral management/distribution, personalization, database marketing, primary research, direct marketing, reactivation, electronic catalog, upsell and cross-sell programs, event/trade show management, Web activity analysis, focus groups/media testing, Web advertising, and fulfillment status linkage.

About SAS

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 40,000 sites - including 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 500(R) - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). Visit us at www.sas.com.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. (R) indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

Copyright (C) 2005 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.

SAS Institute Inc.
Angela Lipscomb, 919-531-2525
Angela.Lipscomb@sas.com