SAS Partners With Intel

The business intelligence software maker has teamed up with chip giant Intel to create blueprints for customers wishing to deploy scalable marketing automation and customer analytic applications.

ORLANDO—SAS Institute Inc. announced Tuesday a renewed commitment to working with partners to build solutions on its business intelligence architecture. It backed that up by introducing partnerships with Intel Corp. and Brooks Automation Inc.

In addition, SAS and chip maker Intel, at the SAS Users Group International conference here, announced the availability today of two "Solution Blueprints" for specific industry solutions that combine SAS software and Intel hardware. The blueprints, the first two of several solutions the companies are expected to deliver, are for multi-channel marketing automation for retailers and enterprise customer analytics for the financial services industry.

The blueprints provide a guideline for deploying such solutions including application software, middleware, operating systems, platform and hardware specifications, based on previous successful deployments.

Both blueprints involve a combination of marketing automation, enterprise performance management and customer analytics software from SAS with Intel-based hardware, including Intels Xeon processor family. Though current versions of the blueprints are based on Release 8.2 of SAS namesake BI platform, future versions are expected to incorporate the forthcoming version 9 of SAS as well as the Intel Itanium processor family, delivering performance and scalability improvements on both counts, officials said.

Separately on Tuesday, SAS announced that it has formed an alliance with tool and factory automation software developer Brooks Automation to jointly develop a yield execution solution for the semiconductor industry.

The solution will combine SAS data management and analytic software with Brooks semiconductor industry domain expertise. It will provide semiconductor company engineers, operators and managers with an integrated view of the data needed to gauge the effect of planned and unplanned engineering changes in the semiconductor fabrication process on manufacturing yields.

The yield execution solution will link to Brooks factory automation software and integrate with third-party automation products, as well. Brooks will have sole distribution rights to the new solution.

"The goal of this joint solution with SAS is to go beyond reactive yield management to proactive engineering analysis and yield execution," said Robert Therrien, president and CEO of Munich, Germany-based Brooks, in a statement. "Until now, there has been no effective solution to these problems."

Randy Guard, solutions strategy director at SAS, said that the company plans to develop similar solutions with third-party vendors as version 9 rolls out.

"Our goal is to work with other companies whose products complement SAS and help them get solutions to market quicker that help their customers solve their problems," Guard said.

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