SAS

Analyst Coverage :

Philip Howard

Daniel Howard

SAS is headquartered in North Carolina and was founded in 1976. The company started life by offering a 4GL-based statistical package for financial and economic analysis but has expanded to offer a multi-faceted product set, providing organisations with an information delivery system that spans all aspects of analytics and associated technologies. This includes business analysis, analytics and data science as well as practical applications thereof (customer intelligence and so forth). In addition, complementary capabilities such as data quality and data integration are also offered.

Since its foundation SAS has expanded primarily in an organic manner and is now a multi-billion-dollar company that has offices and partners worldwide. It remains privately owned. A notable point is that SAS consistently invests a significant proportion of its revenues into R&D, typically at around 25%. This emphasis on R&D, plus the company’s refusal to listen to the blandishments of the stock market (where short-term trends are more important than long-term profits), has meant that SAS is, by some margin, the largest pure-play vendor in the analytics market.