Anticipating a powerhouse platform for SAS data warehousing/data mining software, SAS Institute supports Microsoft Enterprise SQL Server.

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 1, 1997--SAS Institute Inc. today announced that SAS(R) software will support the new Microsoft (R) SQL Server Enterprise Edition 6.5 development platform. The announcement highlights the two companies' ongoing cooperative efforts to provide a robust environment for enterprise customers. Earlier this year, SAS Institute and Microsoft announced SAS Institute's participation in the Microsoft Data Warehouse Alliance and its BackOffice certification.

"For 20+ years, SAS Institute has distinguished itself by providing world class technology and the technical know-how to apply it in solving our customer's enterprise business problems," said Joanna D'Aquanni, SAS Institute's Microsoft alliance manager." "Now, with Microsoft's SQL/E 6.5 and NT Enterprise Edition, our enterprise customers have a cost-effective choice of scalable, robust environments for mission critical applications, and their inherent data processing-intensive needs, such as data warehousing, data mining, and OLAP."

Current customers such as American Express already understand the value of a lower cost environment more wide-span and distributed deployment of mission critical applications, that doesn't sacrifice power and scalability. "We need to support hundreds of users, with the vast majority looking to data marts for their information," said Ricardo DuMornay, IT manager, customer data management at American Express. "SAS software, NT and SQL Server are great for that. We need a suite of products that interoperate, and we look to SAS's participation to improve the performance, scalability and power of our information mart."

"SAS Institute strives to create an open computing environment, letting customers choose the most appropriate platform and data store for their enterprise data warehouse and data exploitation," said D'Aquanni. "With the growing demand for enterprise applications on Windows NT Server, and the need to integrate NT with legacy systems, SAS software facilitates implementation for IT."

"In particular, Microsoft's SQL Server for the enterprise will be a top-shelf data store for SAS Institute's highly anticipated data-mining solution, Enterprise Miner software," said Mark Brown, SAS Institute's program manager for data mining and applied analytics. "Companies mining their vast stores of data with our comprehensive-analyses solution on the powerful WindowsNT Enterprise operating system will be better able to make sound business decisions."

"SAS Institute is a recognized industry leader in enterprise data warehouse development and data exploitation software," said John Nordlinger of the Microsoft SQL marketing team. "SQL/E 6.5 is a robust, scalable database that will help our ISV partners develop solutions with the best price/performance. Together, we offer robust, enterprise solutions with SQL, and support NT/BackOffice as a complete, integrated platform."

Now in its 21st year, SAS Institute is one of the top ten largest independent software vendors in the world, and is the largest privately held software company. The leading provider of data warehousing and decision-support software, the Institute has won the reader-selected 1996 and 1997 Datamation magazine Data Warehousing Product of the Year award and Software Magazine's Editor's Choice award for decision-support software.

SAS Institute provides an integrated suite of information-delivery tools that allow companies to transform the wide variety of data within their organization into information that business users need to make decisions. To make data useful, SAS software collects data from almost every platform and data format; cleans and transforms data into information that users will understand; and stores that information in an open and efficient data warehouse structure. To explore that information, SAS software includes OLAP, query and reporting, EIS, data mining, analysis, data visualization, and application-development interfaces. SAS software is client/server and Web enabled. SAS Institute also delivers business solutions that are complete packages for financial consolidation and reporting, clinical trials analysis, oil and gas analysis and IT service management. Currently, SAS software and business solutions are being used at more than 30,000 business, government, and university sites in more than 120 countries.

Please visit SAS Institute's Web site: www.sas.com SAS is a registered trademark of SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All other tradenames referenced are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: SAS Institute Inc.

Wally Maczka or Pamela Meek, 919/677-8000

www.sas.com