SAS Institute

Infobox Company
company_name = SAS Institute Inc.
company_
company_type = Private
foundation = 1976
location = Cary, North Carolina
founder = Anthony Barr
James Goodnight
John Sall
Jane Helwig
key_people = James Goodnight, CEO and Co-founder
John Sall, Co-founder and Executive Vice President
industry = Computer Software
revenue = profit $2.15 billion USD (2007)
num_employees = 10,401 (2007)
homepage = [http://www.sas.com/ www.sas.com]

SAS Institute Inc. (pronounced "sass" [ [http://www.sas.com/presscenter/bgndr_history.html Company History | SAS] ] ), headquartered in Cary, North Carolina, USA, has been a major producer of software since it was founded in 1976 by Anthony Barr, James Goodnight, John Sall and Jane Helwig. "SAS" was originally an acronym for "Statistical Analysis System" but for many years has been used as an arbitrary tradename (for which the company has received trademark protection in the US and abroad) to refer to the company as a whole, its products having long since broadened beyond the statistical analysis sphere. SAS Institute is one of the largest privately-held corporations in North Carolina and in the software business.

History

Its main and original product was the SAS software package used in statistical analysis, consisting of numerous modules which ran on IBM mainframe computers. In addition to the usual mainframe practice of writing and submitting programs in batch, SAS offered the option, somewhat novel at the time, of a windowed programming environment, where the program being written or edited appeared in one window, the program output appeared in another window, and the program log appeared in a third window.

As other types of computers became available and powerful enough, SAS was continuously developed to run in those environments as well, keeping the familiar user interface and compatible file structure so that SAS users could easily switch from one type of operating system and/or hardware to another. Eventually fully functional SAS could be run on personal computers, either standalone or networked. The widespread rise of Microsoft Windows, however, brought some philosophical difficulties to the product developers, faced with adapting the standard SAS programming interface familiar to SAS users to the standard Microsoft Windows interface familiar to PC users. In addition, even on the personal computer platform, SAS retained the mainframe pricing structure of substantial yearly licensing fees, rather than adopting the personal computer pricing standard of a one-time outright purchase.

Company and software

SAS is a fourth-generation programming language consisting of a suite of modules designed for business intelligence and customer relationship management. Although the advent of more powerful personal computers has also allowed lower cost statistical packages to be available, SAS software continues to be the standard used in statistical analysis of clinical pharmaceutical trials for submission to the Food and Drug Administration. It is also widely used for statistical analysis in the insurance industry and the field of public health, at least partially due to the powerful data import, handling, and manipulation functions added to the base package over the years, to extend the analytical capabilities to different types and formats of data. Other modules available provide for construction of applications for such tasks as data entry or validation. SAS also provides data mining, data warehousing, business intelligence, sustainability and business performance management software. The spectrum of offerings is so wide that many users are expert in one area of the SAS package, but have little or no experience in another. Online documentation for SAS software is provided by SAS Institute on their technical support website.

SAS Institute remains a wholly owned private company, enabling the management, led by James Goodnight, to run the company in the manner they think best, without worry about the demands of shareholders. An unusually high percentage (approximately 25%) of the revenue of the SAS Institute goes to research and development, which is widely considered to be one factor which keeps them ahead of their competitors. [ [http://www.sas.com/corporate/overview/index.html About SAS | SAS ] ] In addition, the management goes to great lengths to keep employees happy in their jobs. For example, on-site amenities include such things as "Free Fruit Mondays", "M&M Wednesdays", "Free Breakfast Fridays", as well as soda fountains and snacks in every breakroom. Other employee benefits include, "two on-site childcare centers, an eldercare information and referral program, an employee health care center, wellness programs, a 58,000 square foot recreation and fitness center, and many other work-life programs." [ [http://www.sas.com/corporate/worklife/index.html Work/Life | SAS ] ] As a result, SAS Institute has frequently been included in lists of the best places to work in America. CBS' "60 Minutes" did a segment on the employee benefits of SAS, entitled "The Royal Treatment." These benefits also pay off for the company in terms of low turnover: SAS lost 3.7% of its employees in 2000, which is about a tenth of competitors' rates. [ [http://www.fastcompany.com/online/21/sanity.html Sanity Inc.] article by Fast Company]

AS user groups

Another factor in the success of SAS Institute is the growth of large and well organized SAS users groups, on local, regional, and international scales. While these serve to make some of the resources of SAS Institute and more experienced users available to the new user, they also serve the Institute by providing essentially free customer service and public relations functions. The SAS Global Forum meets for a conference in a different city each year, where marketing efforts by the Institute combine with technical and educational presentations by users of all levels of sophistication. This conference is widely considered a valuable experience, and has at least once been named the best information technology conference of the year. Unlike entities such as the Independent Oracle Users Group, however, SUGI has never been an independent, self-sufficient, self-operated users group; instead, SAS Institute has successfully maintained strong control of the SUGI Executive Committee and of conference structure and finances. The SAS Global Forum is administered by an Executive Board consisting of prior conference chairs and representatives from SAS Institute. Full-time SAS Institute employees manage and run the logistics of the SAS Global Forum conference itself, with the help and participation of volunteers (serving in such roles as section chairs and speakers) from the user community. After the 2006 conference in San Francisco SAS Global Forum was renamed from SAS Users Group International (SUGI). Only two people have attended every SAS Global Forum: SAS CEO Jim Goodnight and Phil Miller from Washington University in Saint Louis.

Similar but more independent user conferences are held yearly by regional and local SAS users groups around the world. The US has six regional users groups: MWSUG, the MidWest SAS Users Group; NESUG, the NorthEast SAS Users Group; [http://www.pnwsug.com/ PNWSUG] , the Pacific Northwest SAS Users Group; SCSUG, the South-Central SAS Users Group; [http://www.sesug.org/ SESUG] , the SouthEast SAS Users Group; and [http://www.wuss.org/ WUSS] , the Western Users of SAS Software. In addition, there are special interest users groups such as PhUSE, the independent Pharmaceutical Users Software Exchange, which also hold annual conferences.

There is also an online user group, "SAS-L", whose main Listserv server is at the University of Georgia. It is gatewayed to the Usenet newsgroup "comp.soft-sys.sas". To subscribe to the mailing list or view the archives of past messages, visit [http://www.listserv.uga.edu/archives/sas-l.html SAS-L] or Google Groups. At SUGI 31 in San Francisco, preliminary steps were taken to establish a SAS Wiki FAQ maintained by the online SAS user community.

In 2006, SAS Institute started online community forums on the SAS technical support web site. Although these web-based forums are somewhat slow and difficult to navigate, they provide a way to talk directly to SAS Institute developers, and contain information which is otherwise under- or un-documented.

Partners

In March 2008, SAS and icrunchdata partnered to create the SAS Job Network in order to "link the demand for analytical talent and SAS skills with the supply. Graduates with analytical skills, especially at the entry level, are increasingly needed as companies invest in technology to analyze growing stores of data to make better business decisions."cite press release |title=SAS and icrunchdata connect employers with SAS talent |publsher=SAS |date=March 12 2008 |url=http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/031208/SASandicrunchdata.html |accessdate=2008-06-22]

AS Press

SAS Institute has its own book publishing arm, known as SAS Press. Many researchers and academics of repute have published their work with SAS Press. Some of them include, Neil Timm, Ravindra Khattree, Dayanand N. Naik, Peter Westfall, R. C. Littell and R. J. Freund.

Other strategies

More recently, SAS Institute has followed the lead of other major corporate software suppliers by offering SAS Certification for SAS programmers, users, and developers to eliminate some of the risk of hiring individuals of unknown ability; like many such programs, it has met with mixed success. The Institute has similarly launched a program of SAS Partners, who provide a pool of available consultants for corporations who wish to begin incorporating SAS applications into their operations but lack any experience with the software. These individuals also serve as unpaid ambassadors, evangelists, and salesmen for the Institute; as they market their services and products to corporations, as a consequence licensing fees naturally will flow to SAS.

Books and publications on the SAS System are published by mainstream publishers (e.g. John Wiley & Sons, CRC Press) and many more by SAS Institute itself, which instituted a "Books By Users" program in the early 1990s, a program now known as "SAS Press."

Community and awards

Until recently SAS was the principal sponsor of SAS Soccer Park, located in Cary, North Carolina. Jim Goodnight is one of the major contributors to Cary Academy. In 2007, SAS' Canadian division was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers, as published in Maclean's magazine, the only enterprise-level software developer to receive this honor. [cite web|url=http://www.eluta.ca/einfo?en=SAS+Institute+%28Canada%29+Inc.&ri=5adca0b4d05d779e44104ae6d0e91d7e&rk=05654e416c25950bc2aba1b72538e4fb|title=Reasons for Selection, 2007 Canada's Top 100 Employers]

ee also

* SAS System
* JMP
* DataFlux
* Teragram Corporation

References

External links

* [http://www.sas.com/corporate/index.html SAS Institute webpage]
* [http://support.sas.com/events/sasglobalforum/2007/index.html SAS Global Forum 2007 event webpage]