SAS Furthers Open-Door Policy
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The SAS Institute will deepen its resolve to open its architecture by embracing Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) in order to reach out to other data analysis tools, including the Plato online analytical analysis processing server that Microsoft bundles with SQL Server 7.0.
In addition, SAS has quietly begun to embrace the Extensible Markup Language (XML) as a data-neutral file format that will further help to open the company's entire line of applications. Initially, SAS will make use of XML in the next releases of its Balance Scorecard and Customer Resource Management applications due out later this year. In 2000, SAS will make more use of XML by integrating the file format into the core of its product line.
"It opens up a broader market for them. SAS is in the enviable position of having a solid base they can leverage. But they still, in terms of looking for growth, have to figure out how to provide complementary solutions to other servers," said Henry Morris, vice president for data warehousing and information access at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.
According to Mark Moorman, SAS program manager for business intelligence, SAS is making use of DCOM, OLE, XML, and its own push technology to better integrate its products in other environments.
"SAS was a product-focused company. In the last four years, we've decided to step it up a notch and move toward solutions," Moorman said. "The fact that we're moving toward solutions demands that we be open. We can't demand that people use SAS to visualize what they're producing."
As part of that strategy, SAS will also expand its links to enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications by extending support to PeopleSoft and Oracle products. Currently, SAS provides links to ERP suites from SAP and Baan.
In 1998, SAS added OLE support to its applications to better integrate Windows applications. But at the SAS users' conference in Miami in April, the company will outline the second phase of its strategy by describing how it will use DCOM to link to other server applications.
However, although SAS is embracing DCOM, the company has no plans to support the rival Enterprise JavaBeans specification.
The SAS Institute, in Cary, N.C., can be reached at http://www.sas.com.