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SAS MERGES DW TO THE INTELLIGENCE ARCHITECTURE

SAS Institute, a leader in business intelligence and data warehousing, demonstrated the connection between data warehousing and its Intelligence Architecture, a foundation for rapidly and easily obtaining high-quality and consistent information throughout the enterprise.

Introduced at the Data Warehousing Institute conference in New Orleans last week, the SAS Intelligence Architecture is a framework that integrates industry-leading solutions in data warehousing, analytic intelligence and business intelligence to provide organizations with one version of the truth, and ensure consistent information.

"Data warehousing should not compete with analytics and business intelligence -- integrated, they enhance each other," said Tho Nguyen, SAS' director of data warehousing strategy. "Data warehouses are the basis of applications that make sense of large amounts of data, applications like CRM (customer relationship management), portals, and knowledge management. Data warehousing is a strategic imperative that enables the corporation to respond quickly and efficiently to shifting market conditions. Together, integrated analytic intelligence and business intelligence provide a 'Return On Intelligence'."

Companies live and die by the intelligence they can draw out of their data. Intelligence is derived using a combination of data warehousing, advanced analytics and business intelligence. Drawn from a variety of platforms, formats and even physical locations, today companies need to merge their data warehousing and data quality activities to achieve a rapid return on intelligence. Just collecting data, which today comes from an increasing number of locations (operational systems, e-channel, supply chain, and more) is a huge challenge. Once collected, the data must be transformed into information in which users have confidence. New investments must easily integrate and leverage existing computing and operational environments across any platform and any storage facility.

"You have data about your business, your customers, their buying practices and thousands of other variables," added Nguyen. "You can use data warehousing to get a handle on your data and organize it to help make informed business decisions. To achieve the greatest return, however, you need to find the intelligence in your applications -- for customer relationship management, supplier relationship management (SRM), and other mission-critical areas. Data warehouses help pull data from multiple sources, cleanse and organize this data, and through analytics, turn it into intelligence. Intelligence helps answer specific business questions, and the effect of that intelligence can be measured in the company's bottom-line."

An Intelligence Architecture combines data warehousing, analytic intelligence and business intelligence to alleviate the complexity of enterprise data management and accommodate the needs of both business users and IT professionals. The Intelligence Architecture does more than just collect and store information, it also manages and shares information throughout the organization. It is a framework that builds a foundation of information that provides a true 360-degree view of the enterprise.

About SAS

SAS provides software and services that enable customers to transform data from all areas of their business into intelligence. SAS solutions help organizations make better, more informed decisions and maximize customer, supplier, and organizational relationships. Solutions from SAS, the world's largest privately held software company, are used at more than 38,000 business, government and university sites around the world. Ninety-nine of the top 100 companies on the Fortune 500 -- and 90 percent of the Fortune 500 overall -- rely on SAS. For 25 years, SAS has been giving our customers The Power to Know. For more information, visit www.sas.com.

Contact SAS Institute, Wally Maczka or Karen Chadwick, 919-531-5350, Wally.Maczka@sas.com.