Cary, North Carolina, and Redlands, California (July 8, 2002)—SAS, the market leader in business intelligence, and ESRI, the leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, today announced that they are creating an access product between the companies’ software. In addition, SAS and ESRI will jointly explore industry-specific spatially enabled business solutions for targeted market segments.

This joint product development will give organizations the ability to exchange spatial and attribute data between ArcGIS and SAS. By agreeing to joint product development as well as joint sales and marketing activities through each company’s alliance programs, SAS and ESRI have raised the bar in the spatial intelligence marketplace.

SAS and ESRI have jointly explored customer business questions in the past and have found that organizations did not want to leave their existing analysis or GIS environments to work with other data or analytic technologies. Leveraging the work done cooperatively to date, the companies are developing a tight integration between their respective technologies. This integration will enable organizations to apply SAS and ESRI technology to business questions that involve spatial relationships and advanced analytics as part of the intelligence creation process.

"This is a welcome development for the growing number of analytical journalists who use both SAS and ArcGIS for investigative and explanatory projects requiring serious data analysis," said Steve Doig, professor of journalism at Arizona State University. As a reporter for the Miami Herald, Doig started using SAS and GIS software more than a decade ago in covering the 1990 Census, and helped the Herald win a Pulitzer Prize by using the software to analyze damage patterns from Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

As organizations streamline processes, optimize investments, and collaborate across disparate geographies, they are more closely examining the physical markets in which they operate. Add to this the growth of mobile and location-based services, and companies are looking for solutions with the power and flexibility that SAS and ESRI will be able to offer jointly. The initial integration component is expected to be released within the year.

"This development will bring together the power of SAS analytics, data manipulation, and reporting capabilities, with ESRI’s industry-leading spatial analysis and visualization capabilities," said Jim Davis, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, SAS. "SAS is excited to be working more closely with ESRI, focusing on our joint core competencies that will impact both current and emerging market needs and providing extremely robust capabilities to our customers."

"SAS’ leading business intelligence and analytics will extend traditional GIS capabilities to solve more complex business questions," said Jack Dangermond, president, ESRI. "ESRI is very pleased that SAS’ vast experience in business intelligence, data warehousing, and information delivery will be tied very closely with us to help drive the spatial information management market."

For more than 30 years, ESRI has been the leading developer of GIS software with more than 300,000 clients worldwide. ESRI also provides consulting, implementation, and technical support services. In addition to its headquarters in California, ESRI has regional offices throughout the United States, international distributors in more than 90 countries, and more than 1,400 business partners. ESRI’s goal is to provide users with comprehensive tools to help them quickly and efficiently manage and use geographic information to make a real difference in the world around them. ESRI can be found on the Web at www.esri.com.

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 38,000 sites—including 99 of the top 100 businesses on the Fortune 500—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 25 years, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know^™. Visit SAS at www.sas.com.

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E-mail: press@esri.com