SAS INSTITUTE PARTNERS WITH BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

SAS Institute announced a multi-year partnership with Baylor University that will provide technology and expert consulting services and training.

Data warehousing and data mining technology solutions will be the focus of the partnership, which involves both the operational and educational elements of Baylor University.

A customer of SAS Institute since 1987, Baylor University approached SAS Institute seeking a single vendor solution for building, maintaining and presenting information through a data warehouse. The focus was to build a university-wide data warehouse that would provide accurate and accessible information.

Baylor's Graduate School will implement this system first due to its pressing need for comparable data. "We have almost a hundred separate graduate degrees and programs, each with distinct missions and unique data," said Larry Lyon, dean of Baylor's Graduate School. "The Graduate School must integrate these programs to ensure that the overall mission of the university is served. Without comparable, reliable, accessible data, that job cannot be done."

On the educational side, the partnership will expose SAS solutions and software to students in the Hankamer School of Business. This technology will be used to teach concepts applicable to building and maintaining a complete data warehouse solution. Case study assignments will be developed for students that encourage experiential research.

The agreement also calls for the joint development of a Data Mining and Knowledge Management Center at Baylor. This Center will allow students and faculty to use SAS Institute data-mining products to discover and determine relationships and correlations within data. Graduates will be more marketable because of exposure to innovative technical solutions to relevant business questions. "The rapid growth and importance of data mining and data warehousing requires that all business students understand the fundamental technologies associated with this area of knowledge management," said Reagan Ramsower, associate dean for technology for the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor. Ramsower also notes that the faculty at Baylor will be engaged in several research projects to extend the applications of SAS Institute's technologies in various areas.

"SAS Institute will be able to share its technology and decision-support expertise with a leading university, whose mission is to educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service," said Jeff Babcock, vice president of SAS Institute's Public Sector Group. "These are the business leaders of tomorrow. At the same time, we are supplying faculty and students with the technology appropriate to handle real-world challenges. Our goal is to help academic institutions apply today's technology for effective communication and learning."

For more information on Baylor University, visit http://www.baylor.edu/.

For more information on the SAS institute, visit http://www.sas.com.