Wally Maczka

(919) 531-5350

Wally.Maczka@sas.com

SAS says demand for data warehousing is dynamic

CARY, N.C. (August 14, 2001) – SAS Institute, the market leader in business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics, today announced that it sees record growth in the demand for new data warehousing applications, even though IT budgets are experiencing little to no growth in the current economy. Second only to the Internet, users view data warehousing’s ability to access and cleanse disparate data and format that data for business intelligence uses as the key to achieving real ROI, especially during current economic conditions.

"Even in a weak year for IT expenditures, we see sales of our award winning data warehousing growing at feverish pace," said Frank Nauta, SAS worldwide director of data warehousing strategy.

Based on sales of its SAS/Warehouse Administrator™, SAS enjoyed a 66 percent growth in data warehousing worldwide in FY 2000, and better than a 15 percent growth in 2001. "In the Americas market, the data warehousing trend is even more significant," said Nauta. "SAS Americas saw data warehousing demand grow at a rate of 87 percent (FY 2000 over FY 1999), and 66 percent YTD in 2001. The record breaking demand for data warehousing is now in its fifth consecutive year, and as users turn more to customer relationship management (CRM), we anticipate that this trend will continue."

Recent studies by The Data Warehousing Institute and from Deloitte Research point to the growing recognition of the importance and business potential of data warehousing and the related area of decision support. In surveys of the most important technologies, asking IT managers ranked data warehousing No. 2 in 2000-01, elevating it from No. 5 in 1998-99.

According to Nauta, data warehousing is the No. 2 IT/business user priority, with the Internet No. 1 and e-commerce No. 3. "Decision support, or rather business intelligence, a foundation of SAS software, recently moved into the fourth position. Because we see ever-increasing pressure for improved ROI," added Nauta, "SAS, through its industry-leading commitment to R&D continues to add and integrate new functionality such as data quality and DRM (distributed resource management) to its product offerings."

"CRM is today’s business goal, and to be successful, companies must excel at managing customer information, " said Nauta. "Data Warehousing captures customer information, and cleanses that data to correct differences and inaccuracies between data sources and data models. Finally, data warehousing formats the data for analytical CRM, data mining and other business intelligence processes. Business users take this customer information, and analyze the data to understand customer preferences, create customer profiles, and predict customer behavior."

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. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2001 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA.