SAS Institute
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SAS Institute, Inc. 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.
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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
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, and business performance management software. Other modules allow for construction of applications for data entry, validation, etc. 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.
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. As a result, 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. In addition, the management goes to great lengths to keep employees happy in their jobs, so that SAS Institute is usually found in lists of the best places to work in America.
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. Once a year the SAS Users' Group International, (always referred to as SUGI, pronounced soo' gee) meets for a conference (also referred to as SUGI) in a different city, 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. Similar and almost as large conferences are held yearly by the major regional SAS users' groups around the world, such as NESUG (pronounced nee'sug), the NorthEast US SAS Users' Group.
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 most 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.
See also
External link
- SAS Institute webpage (http://www.sas.com/corporate/index.html)
- Yahoo! - SAS Institute Inc. Company Profile (http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/42/42461.html)de:SAS Institute