SAS: Enhancing Its Predictive and Forecasting Technology

| Feb 5, 2008 | Data Management | Competitive Intelligence Report

| Analyst: Michael Schiff

Current Perspective: Positive
Vendor Importance: Moderate/High
Market Impact: Moderate/High

Event Summary

February 5, 2008 - SAS, a business intelligence vendor, has significantly enhanced its award-wining SAS Enterprise Miner, SAS Text Miner, and SAS Forecast Server software, bringing predictive analytics to their highest level yet.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on SAS’ new releases of its SAS Enterprise Miner, SAS Text Miner, and SAS Forecast Server as they provide additional capabilities and functionality that should benefit organizations that deploy them.

• Vendor Importance: Moderate to high to SAS since, as one of the leaders in data mining and advanced analytics, it is important that it continue to evolve and improve its products in order to maintain its market position.

• Market Impact: Moderate to high on the business intelligence market where SAS is one of the industry leaders, especially in the advanced analytics and data mining segment, and its competitors will need to understand and react to any SAS product enhancements.

Recommended Competitor Actions

• SPSS will focus on its recently released (Q4 2007) Clementine 12.0 and Text Mining for Clementine 12.0 predictive analytics technology while reminding the market place that it too, is considered a data mining leader.

• As SAS has already released these products (e.g., SAS Forecast Server 2.1 and SAS Enterprise Miner were available in December) competition will try to position the announcement as “old news about point releases.”

• While this is certainly not the case, competition will continue to try and mis-position SAS as “technology that can only be used by statisticians and actuaries.”

Recommended End User / Customer Actions

• SAS’ installed base should view the new releases of SAS Enterprise Miner, SAS Text Miner, and SAS Forecast Manager as further proof that SAS continues to evolve its offerings and protect their technology investments.

• Prospects considering predictive analytics and forecasting technology should certainly consider SAS in their evaluations.

• In general, users need to be aware that SAS has a fairly rich business intelligence and data integration product portfolio and should consider SAS for both advanced analytics and core BI technology.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

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