SAS Institute Announces Data Analysis Products

HANOVER, GERMANY (02/24/2000) - SAS Institute Inc. announced at CeBIT today a package of data analysis software aimed at helping companies develop relationships with e-commerce customers.

E-Discovery, the core product in SAS Institute's package, is designed to analyze the behavior of consumer and commercial Web users by integrating sophisticated analytics and Web technology, said Phil Winters, vice president of marketing for SAS.

SAS officials began shipping the software last week, [See "SAS Sifts E-business Data," Feb. 18] but the official launch of the software was held until today so the company could introduce it at CeBIT, Winters said at a news conference.

One of the most talked about topics at the trade show is what companies are doing with data they collect about their customers -- both business-to-business customers and business-to-consumer customers -- at their Web site to build and maintain relationships, Winters said. There are a number of ways companies hope to use that information, including measuring click streams detecting intrusions, planning for surges in traffic, rating the risk of fraud and identifying patterns.

E-Discovery uses analysis and statistics to create "new intelligence," which can be used in a number of ways that benefit customers, Winters said. It might be used by a company to tailor a product promotion to a specific group of people, or it might be used internally to help a network manager anticipate a surge in traffic.

SAS has been working on the software for several months and already has sold various parts of the package to 120 customers, including Autotrader.com and Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg in Germany, Winters said.

Quoting Forrester Research Inc., SAS officials said the success of sites cannot be measured by hits and page views alone, and firms are discovering they need an intelligent infrastructure to track visitors and their activities. SAS officials say their customers are achieving competitive advantage by basing business decisions on e-intelligence rather than intuition alone.

The e-Discovery software starts at US$200,000. Pricing for the two other elements of the package, WebHound and IT Service Vision, were not provided.

SAS Institute, based in Cary, North Carolina, can be found on the Web at http://www.sas.com.