SAS INSTITUTE TO STEP UP INVESTMENTS AND ACQUISITIONS

SAS Institute has appointed Andre Boisvert as vice president of business development and strategic investments. Boisvert, who brings nearly 25 years of software industry experience to the newly created position, will centralize the company's investment strategies as they pertain to complimentary technologies and bolster its approach to investments and acquisitions.

"The deals that I will be getting involved with are strategic to SAS Institute's core business, in that they must add value to our already rich and leading edge technology portfolio," said Boisvert. "These deals can vary from simple minority equity stakes in promising upstarts to outright purchases of well established companies."

"Recent industry studies indicate that businesses, no longer preoccupied with Y2K issues, are now going to invest more heavily in data warehousing and data mining technologies," Boisvert continued. "Everyone is looking to get into this marketplace, especially when they realize the exponential ROI that these technologies can deliver when integrated with E-business and CRM offerings. We are in the leadership position right now and we intend to insure that our position is not only maintained but that it is strengthened."

Boisvert has held a number of high profile executive positions within the software industry. He formerly served as senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Oracle Corporation and Corporate Vice President of Marketing at Cognos Corp. Prior to joining SAS Institute, Boisvert also worked as a consultant to Microsoft Corp., and to several leading venture capital firms.

"Acquiring companies is not a new thing for SAS Institute," said Dr. Jim Goodnight, the Institute's president and CEO. "But the volume and frequency of these deals will be dramatically increased as we move forward."

Previous Institute acquisitions include the system 2000(R) database management system from Intel Corp. in 1984; Lattice Inc. in 1986; NeoVisuals, Inc. in 1988; InfoTap(R) technology from GESCAN International, Inc. in 1993; and Statview(R) Life Sciences statistical software from Abacus Concepts in 1997.

About SAS Institute

SAS Institute, the world's largest privately held software company, is the leader in decision support and data warehousing, providing integrated enterprise information-delivery and e-business solutions. Founded in 1976, the Institute markets packaged business solutions for vertical industry and departmental applications, as well as an integrated suite of software tools and consulting services. These allow departments and agencies to transform the wide variety of data within their organizations into information that business users and researchers need to make better decisions. SAS(R) software and services are used at more than 33,000 business, government, and university sites in 115 countries. SAS Institute's 1999 revenues topped $1 billion.

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