SAS and Latitude360 Announce Partnership

SAS Institute, a market leader in e-intelligence and data warehousing, and Latitude360, a division of RWD Technologies, an industry visionary in delivering integrated Internet-enabled business and learning solutions, announced a partnership to enable users to transform raw data into powerful insights.

The partnership combines the strengths of Latitude360's expertise in Internet-based business system implementation, eLearning, Web development and content management, with the power of SAS software and technology to apply statistical methods to vast amounts of process data on a large scale across an enterprise or across enterprises. The solution builds on data warehousing and data analysis technologies to surface business intelligence information to a variety of industries, including automotive, pharmaceutical, financial, banking, insurance and health care.

"SAS understands the business process questions that organizations face and is committed to providing customers with the best possible technology and solutions to solve them," said Jim Davis, SAS' vice president worldwide marketing. "By combining the power of SAS software with the excellent Internet-based services of Latitude360, our customers can attain business knowledge, faster and with proven implementation strategies and expertise."

The National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) has already profited from this strategic SAS/Latitude360 partnership through its wholly owned subsidiary NASD Regulation (NASDR). Latitude360 and SAS have delivered a solution that enables field examiners to quickly review critical business key performance indicators for regulatory compliance in the securities industry. These indicators are derived from the statistical analysis of vast amounts of time-variant data providing information to field examiners that previously was unavailable through conventional methods of surveillance and examination. With a new business process in place fueled by this e-intelligence solution, examiners can assess the performance of member firms and more quickly focus regulatory resources in response to any changes in their operations. "This will result in a dramatically improved quality of regulation operating continuously in a manner approaching real-time regulation," said NASDR vice president Frank J. McAuliffe.

"Latitude360's core strength is our ability to satisfy the very specific systems and training needs of our clients by focusing on the needs of end users," said David Yager, president of Latitude360. "This partnership with SAS adds powerful analysis software to our offering and further enhances our ability to deliver solutions that leverage knowledge across an enterprise to fuel growth."

About Latitude360

Latitude360, a division of RWD Technologies, was established in 2000 to respond to the emerging opportunities involving Internet technologies in eSolutions and eLearning. Leveraging RWD's many years of experience in the development of systems, content and delivery of information, Latitude360 was developed as RWD's full service Internet/Information Technology services group. Visit Latitude360 at www.latitude360.com.

About SAS

SAS is a world leader in e-intelligence software and services, enabling its customers to turn raw data - including the vast quantity generated by e-business - into usable knowledge. Software from SAS, the world's largest privately held software company, is used at more than 35,000 business, government and university sites in 110 countries. SAS' 1999 revenues totaled $1.02 billion. Please visit SAS on the Web at www.sas.com.

Contact SAS Institute, Wally Maczka, 919-677-8000 x5350, Wally.Maczka@sas.com or Latitude360, Subhash Nagpal, 410-715-5684, snagpal@latitude360.com.