SAS Institute Prepares SAS System for the Macintosh

CARY, NC (June 28, 1994)--Following the first of two usability studies with
several large SAS System customers, SAS Institute has released a limited,
pre-beta version of the SAS System for the Macintosh.

Scheduled for beta release this fall and production early next year, the
SAS System for the Macintosh (Release 6.1 1 ) is an integrated suite of
software for enterprise-wide information delivery. The Macintosh release
contains all the data access, management, analysis and presentation
capabilities that the SAS System currently has on all other platforms it
supports--mainframes, minicomputers, PCs and UNIX workstations.

" As with all development at SAS Institute, current customer demand
prompted us to develop the SAS System for the Mac," said Tom Cole, manager
of Macintosh host group development. "These customers told us that they
wanted SAS software to support their Macintoshes so they could better
integrate their Macs in their organizations' information delivery
processes. So, as we've begun working on the project, we've relied very
heavily on these customers' input in all stages of development."

For the new release, SAS Institute conducted a usability study last
Wednesday at the Institute's Cary, N.C. headquarters. Representatives from
several current SAS software sites that have a large number of Macintoshes
installed were invited to run a series of tests on a development version
of the SAS System for the Macintosh. These users also ran several of their
organizations' own internal SAS applications on the new platform.

"The feedback we've gained from this study, as well as from a second
usability study planned for next month, will help shape the eventual look
and functionality of the SAS System for the Macintosh," Cole said.

According to Cole, the SAS System for the Macintosh will support both the
Motorola 680x0 chip and PowerPC (Power Macintosh) chip. With the release,
which fundamentally adheres to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, SAS
software users can expect their current SAS applications to look and act
like native Macintosh applications.

TCP/IP will be the communications protocol supported, thus allowing sites
to connect their applications across multiple platforms and operating
systems for distributed client/server computing. The software will provide
minimal support for issuing and receiving AppleScript instructions between
SAS System and other non-SAS System applications. The product will also
use Microsoft's ODBC for talking with native and remote databases.

Currently installed in 26,600 sites worldwide, the SAS System is an
integrated suite of software products for enterprise-wide information
delivery. The software provides organizations with tools to access,
manage, analyze and present their data within an applications development
environment. Capabilities within the SAS System include EIS, spreadsheets,
graphics, data analysis, report writing, quality improvement, project
management, computer performance evaluation, client/server computing,
database access, decision support, applications development and more.

Headquartered in Cary, NC, privately held SAS Institute is one of the
world's 10 largest independent software companies. Since its incorporation
in 1976, SAS Institute has consistently led the software industry in
percentage of revenue devoted to research and development (34 percent in
1993, or $143 million of its $420.3 million total revenue).

For more information, contact the Software Sales Department at SAS
Institute Inc., Cary. NC. Telephone (919) 677-8000.

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