SAS commits to independent future

BI giant SAS will play no role in consolidation land rush

Business intelligence (BI) giant SAS has reiterated its commitment to play no part in the impending consolidation of the BI software market and insisted it will remain a private company.

Speaking at the company's North Carolina headquarters this week, chief executive Jim Goodnight said the company had no interest in being acquired or becoming a public company. He also insisted that private status meant the vendor was free to invest proportionally more in research and development than its rivals.

However, Jim Davis, chief marketing officer at SAS, said that widespread consolidation in the BI market was now likely as traditional query and reporting BI tools have been largely "commodotised". He cited industry rumours earlier this year that IBM was interested in acquiring BI firm Cognos, and also speculated that Oracle’s penchant for big software acquisitions meant it too could look to buy a BI specialist.

Goodnight said such consolidation would benefit SAS. "We love to see competitors being bought up because it usually means they disappear for at least a year as their new owner tries to integrate them," he argued.

SAS said that its commitment to developing specialised reporting and analytical applications, such as risk management and fraud detection, and targeting these at sectors including banking, would help protect its software from becoming commodotised.

"Performance management is all about context," said Russ Cobb, senior product marketing director at SAS. "A chief marketing officer at a bank has a different idea of performance management compared to a chief finance officer at a retail firm. Technology solutions have to take that into account and... we now have a wealth of knowledge that we've captured and embedded in industry-specific solutions."

Goodnight said this focus on solutions rather than individual BI tools limited pressure on IT departments to integrate and customise various BI tools to suit their industry requirements.

Underlining this strategy, SAS will today launch two new suites designed to optimise after-sales support and warranty activities, and help casinos and gaming firms maximise customer returns.

The SAS Service Intelligence suite is primarily aimed at manufacturing firms and combines SAS’s existing Warranty Analysis suite with its Service Parts Optimization and Service Operations Optimization products. The product is designed to help firms optimise after sales activities through reduced inventories, better detection of suspect warranty claims and improved customer satisfaction.

SAS Patron Value Optimization suite, meanwhile, is aimed at gaming firms and offers analytical functionality for assessing customers' behaviour and automating marketing campaigns and business processes to maximise returns from each customer, the company said.