DataLogic Inc. joins SAS Institute's Quality Partner Program.

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 4, 1997--SAS Institute Inc. today announced that DataLogic Inc., a Houston, Texas-based consulting company, has been accepted into the Institute's Quality Partner Program.

The Quality Partner Program is designed to assist and support third-party organizations whose primary business is providing consulting services using SAS(R) software, an integrated suite of information delivery software for business decision making. Currently, more than 250 organizations are SAS Quality Partners worldwide.

Founded in the early 1990s, DataLogic specializes in SAS consulting and contract programming. "Being a Quality Partner helps DataLogic Inc. pave the way for future business opportunities as well as enhance its current business contacts," said Derek Nguyen, the company's president. "This relationship is truly a first-class alliance that enables us to offer new services to our clients in terms of executive information systems (EIS) and clinical trials development."

DataLogic offers a full range of planning, systems integration, project management, and application development capabilities to clients in the transportation, manufacturing, software, financial, utility, and health care industries.

"Our goal in supporting this program is to identify those firms who provide quality consulting support and who are dedicated to SAS software," said Loretta Schlatzer, manager of the program at SAS Institute. "We are pleased to announce DataLogic's joining the Quality Partner Program."

To be eligible for the Quality Partner Program, consulting companies must have annual revenues of less than $5 million, provide three customer references, and obtain sponsorship by an appropriate SAS Institute employee. In addition, they must meet the program's training requirements. For organizations that meet the qualifications of the program, SAS Institute provides a special software-and training-pricing package, use of the Quality Partner logo, and customer referrals as appropriate.

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.

For more information about the Quality Partner Program, contact SAS Institute Inc. at [phone]. For more information about DataLogic Inc., contact Derek Nguyen at [phone]. -0-

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CONTACT: SAS Institute Inc.

Angela Padgett or Pamela Meek, 919/677-8000

www.sas.com