SAS Launches Enhanced Vertical BI Line (
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SAS announces plans to expand its data integration capabilities and an enhanced set of business intelligence applications.SAN FRANCISCO—
SAS Institute at its annual user conference introduced on March 27 three new and seven enhanced business intelligence applications designed to give customers tools for performing data analysis that predict trends and uncover potential problems.
Headquartered in Cary, N.C., SAS, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary as an independent data warehousing and data analysis company during its annual SAS Users Group International conference here this week, also announced that it was expanding its research and development of enterprise data integration technologies.
This initiative will include enhancements to the SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server Software to provide more data monitoring, verification and cleansing capabilities that will provide more accurate and consistent information, company officials said.
These enhancements are due for release in July 2006.
The company will increase its R&D in data integration by 15 percent per year in 2006 and 2007 to continue to develop a SAS universal data integration platform that will serve as an alternative to other data warehouse systems.
Click here to hear an eWEEK.com podcast interview with SAS CEO Jim Goodnight about a recent corporate acquisition and current business developments.
SAS data warehouse technology works with multiple databases and data file formats and serves as an alternative to data warehouse systems based on relational databases from Oracle, IBM and others, SAS CEO James Goodnight said.
Oracle competes for at least 9 percent of SAS sales engagements, making Oracle its biggest single competitor, Goodnight said. The belief of many Oracle customers that its relationship database is "the only way they should go with data warehousing is a tragic mistake," he said.
Click here to read more about SAS CEOs view of the competition.
SAS data warehouse technology "can store many, many times more data than relational databases" and is much better suited for data analysis and BI, he said.
The company will also introduce new customer data integration technology that will allow enterprises to synchronize, consolidate and manage customer information that usually exists in separate databases and applications.
The goal of this technology is to help companies reconcile customer data at the point of the transaction so companies get faster insight into customer interests and needs, said Jim Davis, SAS chief marketing officer. This quickly provides new opportunities to sell additional goods and services to customers on a real-time basis rather than waiting until an overnight batch run or database update provides the information, Davis said.
The company has also assembled a special data integration focus team that can visit customer sites round the world to study their data integration needs and propose solutions.
Next Page: SAS focuses on industry verticals.
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