CIO Insight: SAS Is Clear Leader in Business Intelligence; Surpassing Business Objects, Hyperion and Cognos in Annual Survey.

CARY, N.C. -- SAS was ranked as the leader in business intelligence in CIO Insight's 2005 Vendor Value Survey, where 884 IT executives were asked whether their top vendors are delivering the value and reliability they expect.

Overall the survey reported that IT executives were happier with their vendors during 2005, with 18 vendors, including SAS, receiving higher scores than in the previous year. SAS received an overall rating of 67.7 percent, up 3.2 percentage points from the 2004 survey.

In the category of Business Intelligence, "SAS is the clear leader," reported CIO Insight. "SAS is the eighth-ranked company overall for solving business problems. Hyperion and Cognos fall between 55 percent and 60 percent in every rating category, while Cognos ranks in the bottom quartile in every category."

SAS differentiates itself from other conventional BI vendors in the industry by providing unmatched technology and expertise in advanced analytics, data management and tailored solutions for specific industries, such as banking, life sciences, manufacturing and retail. SAS takes enterprises Beyond BI(TM) by integrating analytics that not only supply insight and hindsight in the form of historical reports, but predictive analytics that help predict outcomes and provide greater insight and foresight. With these capabilities, SAS offers users at all levels immediate access to cleansed and reliable data through targeted user interfaces that match the skill level of the individual user. For more information, please visit: http://www.sas.com/technologies/bi.

CIO Insight's 2005 Vendor Value Survey measured how U.S.-based IT executives generally perceive the value of their vendors' product and service offerings, and those executives' overall satisfaction with the support these vendors provide. After identifying the vendors they have had a business relationship with in the past 12 months, respondents were asked to rate vendors as "excellent," "good," "fair" and "poor" on seven key criteria. To read more about the survey, visit: http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1397,1902378,00.asp

About CIO Insight

CIO Insight is the business journal of record for today's senior IT decision-makers. Every month, CIO Insight provides subscribers with cutting-edge IT business strategies, management techniques, case studies, proprietary research/analysis and actionable tools all designed to help IT decision-makers achieve success.

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 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 three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). Visit us at www.sas.com.