Event Summary
"CARY, N.C. (Feb. 24, 2000) - SAS Institute, the market leader in integrated
data warehousing and decision support, has announced the production availability
of SAS/Warehouse Administrator software, Version 2.0. Demonstrated at the Data
Warehousing Institute conference in Anaheim, Calif., this new version provides
IT the ability to proactively publish data warehouse information and track its
usage, plus aggressively manage the process of change in the data warehouse."
"Data warehouses and data marts have become a vital component of all successful
data mining, knowledge management, business portal, e-intelligence, customer
relationship management (CRM) and supplier relationship management (SRM) applications
today," said Frank Nauta, product manager for SAS/Warehouse Administrator at
SAS Institute.
Nauta
added, "Successful warehouses are continuously changing to keep pace with the
changing business rules that they support. SAS/Warehouse Administrator simplifies
change management by providing information delivery through e-enabled viewers
like MetaSpace Explorer and integration with business intelligence and reporting
tools. It helps make IT professionals more productive by giving them the ability
to publish data from the warehouse - putting information in the hands of those
who need it and freeing up IT staff for other projects."
Version
2.0 offers proactive information delivery with the addition of publish-and-subscribe
tools robust enough for the entire enterprise, and offers enhanced intelligent
access to data sources including SAP AG's R3, Baan, Oracle, DB2, Teradata, SQL
Server 7.0, Sybase and many others.
SAS
Institute was voted No. 1 in data warehousing and business intelligence in DM
Review's 1999 Data Warehouse 100. SAS/Warehouse Administrator is a key component
of this award-winning solution. Installed at more than 600 sites worldwide,
SAS/Warehouse Administrator is the leading tool to help IT professionals meet
the demands of administering a warehouse.
"IT
and business users will find significant enhancements when building and designing
warehouses and extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) processes," Nauta
said. "By tracking the usage of information in the warehouse, IT staff can identify
and remove data that is not being used. Removing unnecessary data makes the
warehouse more efficient and maximizes hardware investments."
Market
Impact
Publish/Subscribe metaphors are becoming much more common in the data warehouse
arena. The ability for users to subscribe (request information on a regular
basis), and for the server to publish ("push") that information automatically
to those users is a powerful feature. Platinum Technology had already begun
on an effort in this area, known as "Project C", which was delayed by their
acquisition by Computer Associates.
It
has been made clear by the success of products such as PointCast that push technology
is an important aspect of information distribution. In addition, although SAS
Institute has not been well known in the Extract/Transform/Load arena, they
have a strong offering.
SAS
has also formed a business intelligence alliance with IBM which may be leveraged
by customers in the general data warehousing arena.
User
Recommendations
Customers evaluating data warehouse solutions should include SAS Institute on
a long list of candidates for selection. With their background in statistical
products, SAS is particularly strong in the data-mining arena. SAS Institute's
extract/transform/load tool has native drivers for many of the legacy data formats
on the market (including databases such as CA/IDMS, CISAM, Model 204, MUMPS,
and Unidata), and should have an interface for almost any customer's requirement.
The products also provide integration with data modeling tools such as CA/ERWin
to simplify the consolidation of warehouse metadata.