Signing CSC, Sun, HP, IBM and Digital as charter members; SAS Institute Targets Data Warehousing Market With New Partnerships.

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 22, 1995--SAS Institute today announced the launch of its new Data Warehousing Partners Program -- a program designed to help organizations more rapidly implement data warehousing projects. Computer Sciences Corp., Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard Corp., Digital Equipment Corp., and IBM Corp. are the first companies to join the program.

The Data Warehousing Partners Program is open to software vendors, hardware vendors, systems integrators and IT consulting firms who offer products and/or services that are complementary with the SAS(R) System for data warehousing. Program participants agree to share information regarding mutual customers, work together to help organizations establish a successful data warehouse, and join forces to better educate the marketplace about data warehousing.

"The overall goal of the program is to provide organizations with a faster path to the information they need for competitive advantage," said SAS Institute President Jim Goodnight. "To achieve this, we're working closely with our data warehousing partners to deliver quality products and services to meet our mutual customers' expanding data warehousing needs."

"Our Data Warehousing Partners Program complements the joint-development and joint-marketing agreements we already have with dozens of vendors," said Randy Betancourt, SAS Institute's program manager for data warehousing. "This program, however, focuses the partnership on the data warehousing arena -- a key market for SAS Institute and our customers."

The success of this new partnership program is expected to pave the way for SAS Institute to initiate other topical alliances with leading technology vendors.

Comments from the Data Warehousing Program Partners

"SAS Institute offers one of the best integrated solutions in the rapidly-growing field of data warehousing," said Van B. Honeycutt, Computer Sciences Corp. president and chief executive officer. "The real power of our alliance is in the added value we can bring with our management consulting, systems integration and outsourcing services."

"SAS and Sun have a long-term relationship that has resulted in our number one UNIX marketshare position among SAS customers," said Mark Tolliver, vice president, market development for Sun Microsystems Inc. "The combination of the comprehensive SAS end-to-end data warehousing solution with Sun's scalable SPARC servers and multithreaded Solaris operating environment give customers superior performance resulting in better business decisions, faster.

"Our continued joint R&D investments further strengthen the performance of the SAS data warehousing/decision support solution on Sun. This close relationship provides our mutual customers with a competitive edge in today's rapidly changing marketplace."

"Hewlett-Packard is pleased to be participating in SAS Institute's Data Warehousing Partners Program," said Gina Cassinelli, solutions marketing manager of Hewlett-Packard's General Systems Division. "This further strengthens our existing partnership in the data warehousing market and represents great synergy with Hewlett-Packard's own OpenWarehouse program. Our combined solutions and experience will provide customers with an effective and proven decision support environment."

"The SAS Data Warehouse Partners Program promises to be a significant resource for organizations whose success depends on state-of-the-art data warehousing solutions," said Ed Barker, manager of Digital's Enterprise Solutions Initiative. "Digital's AlphaServer systems provide the foundation for an open, scalable, 64-bit data warehouse environment that is best suited to meet customers' most demanding business challenges.

"Digital and SAS Institute have already been working together to satisfy customers' data warehouse requirements, and today's announcement further solidifies our commitment to continue this effort."

"Partnerships like this assure our customers that they can leverage their investments in information technology for better business results," said Martin C. Clague, IBM's general manager of Worldwide Client/Server Computing. "This is particularly true as we incorporate new approaches and technologies into our product.

"For example, work is under way in IBM development labs and at SAS Institute to let our customers take advantage of object-oriented programming techniques and to mine the corporate assets they have stored in data warehouses. We believe that as customers profit from more efficient and powerful systems, our companies can profit from their success. We're proud of what we have been able to accomplish for them together and look forward to our continued partnership."

The SAS System for Data Warehousing

As the only provider of back-end to front-end data warehousing solutions, SAS Institute's position in this market is unique. With the SAS System, openness -- the ability to be interoperable with software products from another vendor -- is an option, not a strategy that the user is forced to take to build a complete data warehouse.

The completeness of the SAS System for Data Warehousing marks a distinct contrast to other Data Warehouse partnerships where the customer must integrate products from as many as 50 different software vendors to achieve the full range of software functionality that is essential for a data warehouse.

"In our experience, the smaller the number of software products there are in a data warehouse project, the greater the chances for a rapid and cost-effective implementation" Betancourt said.

SAS Institute has invested heavily in data warehousing over the past several years, and has architected its software to make more than 50 different data sources accessible to decision-based applications. The SAS System's relational data tables perform effectively as a data warehouse storage structure and are open to third-party products.

The SAS System's client/server and middleware enabled tools meet the growing demand for distributed logic through application partitioning, while its business intelligence tools for decision support on the desktop are the market leaders.

With 1994 revenues of $482 million, SAS Institute Inc. (Cary, N.C.) is the world's largest privately held independent software company. Since its incorporation in 1976, SAS Institute has consistently led the major software vendors in percentage of revenue reinvested in research and development (31 percent in 1994, or about $150 million).

SAS Institute's five market initiatives form the core of its development and marketing efforts, reflecting strengths of the company and its flagship product, the SAS System, an integrated suite of information delivery software for business decision making.

These areas are Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, Application Development, Analytic and Technical, and Business Solutions. Currently, about 29,000 businesses, government agencies and universities worldwide are using the SAS System.

SAS is a registered trademark of SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All other trade names referenced are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: SAS Institute Inc., Cary

Beverly Liles or Miranda Drake, 919/677-8000

or

The Weber Group

Patty Williams or Stephanie Townsend, 617/661-7900