SAS INSTITUTE'S NEW INFORMATION DELIVERY ARCHITECTURE
PROVIDES FOUNDATION FOR ENTERPRISE DECISION SUPPORT
PROJECTS
SAS Institute Inc., a market leader in integrated data warehousing and decision support, has announced plans to begin delivering in June the final phase of the Nashville Project, an open, scalable architecture for Web-enabled enterprise information delivery.
This architecture is the result of a four-year development project to support industry standards and completely reshape the SAS user interface and data access capabilities of SAS software.
The Nashville Project, composed of Version 7 and Version 8 of the SAS System, has been delivered to customers in a two-year multi-phased launch, to be completed by the end of 1999. This Information Delivery Architecture (IDA) provides IT managers with a cohesive strategy for supporting enterprise-wide data warehousing and decision support systems.
The timing is right
Over the last five years, a substantial portion of IT budgets have been earmarked for shoring up operational data stores and revamping systems for Year 2000 compliance. But organizations that took an early lead in Year 2000 preparedness are now developing post-Y2K plans, and recent research indicates that a top priority for IT departments ready to take the next step is moving data warehousing and decision support projects forward.
SAS Institute President and CEO Jim Goodnight said, "As our customers look beyond Y2K, we're seeing increasing demand for enterprise business solutions - such as customer relationship management and balanced scorecard -- that require an architecture encompassing the entire information delivery process, from data access and storage, through the process of surfacing intelligence from the data, to information distribution. SAS Institute is the only software vendor that empowers IT to deliver business information in the context of a complete Information Delivery Architecture."
Addressing IT pains
"At the most basic level," said Jim Davis, SAS Institute's Program Director for IT Strategy, "a complete IDA must address the IT department's need to provide support for open standards; their need to optimize investments in resources such as hardware, data sources, applications, and even people; and their need to provide access to an ever-increasing number of users." Prior to the Nashville Project, SAS Institute began addressing some of these issues with its MultiVendor Architecture that allows users to run applications identically across all major hardware platforms, and MultiEngine Architecture that provides native access to all popular data sources. Major changes with Version 7 included Web-enablement of SAS software and data storage optimized for decision support.
Support for industry standards
In Version 8, the final phase of Nashville, SAS Institute's Information Delivery Architecture ensures that all of SAS Institute's software products work efficiently, both together and with common third party software tools from which SAS software draws data (proprietary databases) or to which SAS software outputs information for further manipulation (such as an Excel spreadsheet). The Nashville Project helps IT managers leverage their investments in industry and corporate standards including COM, DCOM, and CORBA communications protocols (in Version 8), and OLE/DB for OLAP (production now).
Applications development environment helps IT maximize resources
As part of the Nashville Project, AppDev Studio delivers a thin-client-interface using the latest technologies via the Web. AppDev Studio is the first Java thin-client development suite tailored specifically for Information Delivery, extending these capabilities to more users at reduced deployment cost through a Java integrated development environment and Information Delivery Java Beans (reusable Java components) and CGI/html.
Reaching More end users
Publish and Subscribe technology enables information delivery in a proactive fashion across platforms, operating systems, and applications. The framework makes it easy for information producers to publish information in a variety of formats - from individual components to packages of information.
Support is available for applications to publish information to individual users, groups of users (channels), and message queues. Metadata associated with the framework is maintained in LDAP, an industry standard for directory services. SAS/ Warehouse Administrator makes information publishing a reproducible and scheduled process.
Platforms Supported
Version 7: MVS, CMS, Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 95, OS/2, Compaq's Digital UNIX, Solaris 2, HP-UX, AIX, Open VMS Alpha, OpenVMS (VAX); Version 8: all of the above and NCR UNIX-MP RAS, SCO UnixWare 7, Sequent Dynix/PTX.
About SAS Institute - SAS Institute, one of the top 10 independent software vendors, is the leader in decision support and data warehousing, providing integrated enterprise information-delivery solutions. The Institute markets packaged business solutions for vertical industry and departmental applications, as well as an integrated suite of software tools and consulting services that allow companies to transform the wide variety of data within their organizations into information that business users and researchers need to make better decisions. SAS software and services are used at more than 33,000 business, government, and university sites in over 115 countries. Founded in 1976, SAS Institute is the world's largest privately held software company with annual revenue of $871 million.
Please visit SAS Institute's Web site: http://www.sas.com/.
SAS Institute, Inc. Information Delivery Architecture Backgrounder
Information Delivery Architecture (IDA) is SAS Institute's open and scalable architecture that allows for rapid development of end-to-end information delivery systems that meet user needs and are easy to adapt as those needs change. Information delivery is the end-to-end process of converting raw data, which large organizations have in abundance, into the meaningful information that is required to support successful decision-making.
Decision-makers in an organization work to improve the company's business performance, for example by attracting more customers or reducing a product's production time. Decision-makers use information delivery software - they need data from all over the company, held in operational systems and databases, and from external sources. They analyze data and communicate their findings throughout the organization.
The evolution of information delivery applications -- Putting sophisticated information delivery tools in the hands of decision-makers is still a relatively new phenomenon. The problem with this approach was both the time delay and the limited types of analyses that could be carried. There was little room for personal creativity. First, we saw the advent of personal productivity tools which decision-makers could use, initially on mainframe terminals and minis, and later on PCs. Next, we saw IT departments developing one-off end-user applications. The IT department, however, may have problems. Software upgrades become increasingly problematic.
Today, information delivery software involves reducing the investment of time, money and resources spent on integrating so called "best of breed" products, by standardizing on core, strategic software within a defined architecture. In the context of information delivery, this involves standardizing on the smallest number of products which can extract data from the company's operational systems and databases, provide the required analytical and reporting functionality, communicate with each other and support all of the distribution media required.
Nashville Technology Highlights
Platforms supported
For further information, contact Pamela Meek or Wally Maczka, SAS Institute Inc., 919/677-8000.