SAS Forecast Server, announced at the firm’s user event in Lisbon last week and due to ship in the fourth quarter, will offer a time-series feature to identify trends. For example, banks could use the system to understand ATM usage patterns, allowing more efficient all- ocation of money in machines.

“Our customers want to know what’s going to happen in future rather than just reporting what happened in the past,” said chief executive Jim Goodnight.

SAS also announced forthcoming updates to its Enterprise BI Server, including drag-and-drop report building tools, a PowerPoint plug-in, and time-based filters and calculation capabilities.

Meanwhile, Goodnight played down prospects for service-oriented architectures, and said that few firms are looking to move to SOA-based business intelligence systems.