CARY, N.C., March 28, 2005 -- SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today announced a strategic partnership with The Home Depot(R), the world's largest home improvement retailer. SAS will provide The Home Depot with a revenue optimization software solution to enable optimal pricing, promotion and clearance decisions throughout the entire merchandise life cycle.

"Our agreement with SAS allows us to provide our merchandising team with one comprehensive solution to make the right pricing decisions and to ultimately consolidate multiple decision support applications with one software vendor," said Mark Healy, senior director of Merchandising Operations at The Home Depot. "We believe the SAS software platform will enable our merchandising operation to perform more efficiently and effectively."

The new software will be integrated into The Home Depot's centralized merchandising system to provide price and promotion decisions. Currently, The Home Depot merchants collect information from multiple sources to make decisions, and SAS will streamline this while applying analytics and predictive modeling across the merchandising process.

"The Home Depot's leadership in the global retail industry and its executive commitment to technology innovation made it the ideal strategic partner to help SAS round out its fully integrated merchandise intelligence solution," said Jim Davis, chief marketing officer at SAS. "The Home Depot's unique understanding of integrating merchandise planning and revenue intelligence has contributed to the development of the only software suite available today that helps retailers manage revenue and margin through the entire merchandise life cycle."

About the SAS(R) Revenue Optimization Suite

SAS Revenue Optimization helps retailers maximize revenue and margins by precisely setting and managing regular prices, planning optimal promotions and executing the most successful markdown strategies, all within the context of total management of the product life cycle. With the advanced data management, forecasting and analytic capabilities of SAS Revenue Optimization, retailers no longer have to rely solely on gut instinct or historical analysis.

About The Home Depot

Founded in 1978, The Home Depot(R) is the world's largest home improvement specialty retailer and the second largest retailer in the United States, with fiscal 2004 sales of $73.1 billion. The company employs approximately 325,000 associates and has 1,896 stores in 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, nine Canadian provinces and Mexico. The company recently announced the creation of a business development operation for retail expansion into China. The Home Depot has been recognized by Fortune as the #1 Most Admired Specialty Retailer for 2005. Its stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:HD) and is included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

About SAS

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 40,000 sites - including 96 of the top 100 companies on the Fortune Global 500(R) - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R).

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. (R) indicates USA registration. Copyright (C) 2005 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

Angela Lipscomb, 919-531-2525;
Angela.Lipscomb@sas.com
www.sas.com/presscenter