Serving a larger slice of the enterprise computing pie

SAS System For The Mac Empowers Key Decision Makers

CARY, NC (June 20, 1995) --Providing a sound client/server solution to
maximize computing investments, SAS Institute's release of the SAS System
for the Apple Macintosh is finding favor among organizations looking to
empower users, including key decision makers.

Shipping for the first time on the Macintosh, the SAS System includes all
the application breadth and client/server capabilities that have
distinguished the software as an enterprise business analysis solution on
more than 40 computing platforms. The new release of the SAS System, an
integrated suite of information delivery software for business decision
making, allows customers to bring their Macintoshes out of isolated
pockets at their companies and integrate them into the corporate
mainstream. The new release went production in March and is significantly
streamlining decision-making processes at organizations such as Sprint,
California State University, and the University of Georgia.

Sprint Stretches Its Computing Dollar

Located in Kansas City, Mo., Sprint is a typical example of how the SAS
System for the Macintosh can help a company make the most of its computing
investment. As a longtime PC and mainframe SAS System customer, Sprint
awaited the day when they would be able to integrate the SAS System into
their large Macintosh population, which includes many of the company's
decision makers.

"Now we can deliver information directly to our users' desktops," said
David Wichman, Senior Systems Analyst for Sprint. "With the SAS System on
the Macintosh, we can use the Macintosh as a true reporting tool. Key
decision makers and users who have this application on their desktops just
need to point and click to update the data, and they can get what they
want whether it's a compensation report or a weekly report and they can
get it when they want it."

Without the SAS System on the Macintosh, these decision makers requested
analyses and reports through Wichman, who used SAS software on Windows to
generate the reports and deliver them in hardcopy form. "This system
created two major problems," he said. "First, not everyone had the same
information at the same time. Sprint has offices in New York, Chicago, Los
Angeles, and San Francisco. When a manager from our office would call
another office and reference a particular report, that office might not
have received report yet. The second problem was timing. Management had to
wait for me to produce the reports they needed."

Wichman's search for a new strategy that would solve these challenges led
him to the SAS System on the Macintosh, which combines the power of the
SAS System with the Macintosh look and feel. The result is increased
efficiency in many areas of the company. "I feel like we're finally making
the most of both of these environments," he said. "Sprint has a big
investment in Macintosh, and to use it only for E-mail, word processing,
or spreadsheets isn't very effective. Now, with the SAS System on the
Macintosh, we can use the Macintosh as a true reporting tool. This makes
our investment much more of a dollar-for-dollar value."

Macintosh Enjoys Expanded Role at Cal State University

Getting more value for the computing dollar was also a goal of the
California State University CITS (Chancellor's Office Information
Technology Services) team, for which Marv Lindsey handles new technology
and training. One of the team's latest projects is incorporating the SAS
System for the Macintosh into the Chancellor's Office corporate data
warehousing strategy.

"We have approximately 500 Macs in our organization, all the way up to the
Executive Vice Chancellor," Lindsey said. Two SAS System applications that
the CITS team maintains have been ported from MVS to the Macintosh. "They
run beautifully, and the users have more control over them now," he said.

One of those applications, the Student Needs and Priority Survey, has a SAS
data set of about 15,000 records. "The data are right on the clients'
desktops," Lindsey said. "Before, they were bogged down with slow MVS
response time, and now that is not a problem. And they have the look and
feel of the SAS System on the Macintosh. This is an impressive product by
an impressive company."

The Student Needs application is now being enhanced to include an icon
that, when users click on it, presents a pop-up menu that lists the 22
campuses in the California State University system. Users can then select
a campus and browse the data or view the data in a graphical form such as
in a bar graph, and drill down further.

Another critical application that the team is porting to the SAS System on
the Macintosh is the SEARS (Student Expense and Resources) survey, which
provides the university with data related to student income and expenses
to help monitor students' financial resource capabilities. Still another
SAS application now running on Macintosh is an EIS that displays
university historical enrollment data. Enrollment data are first presented
in the form of a bar graph for a particular college year, with one bar for
each campus. Then it lets users drill down on an individual campus to view
that campus' enrollment by other categories such as student level
(freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior).

University of Georgia Migrates To Client/Server

Porting SAS System applications to the Macintosh was a key step toward
client/server computing at the University of Georgia. Among those ported
was a network billing and usage application designed to track broad-band
usage on the campus' TCP/IP backbone network that was originally developed
on MVS, OS/2, and UNIX.

"My philosophy is use the right computer for the right thing," said Greg
Nelson, the university's manager of host systems and statistical software
support. "So, if you're analyzing lots of data, it only makes sense to run
those applications where they work best. If you're running graphical
applications, then Macintosh is one of my favorites. The SAS System's
ability to take different pieces of data and get them across to another
environment, including its ability to talk to JMP software, which we also
support here, are great features."

The SAS System provides organizations with tools to access, manage, analyze
and present their data within an applications development environment.
Capabilities within the SAS System include EIS, client/server computing,
data warehousing, database access, applications development, graphics,
data analysis, report writing, quality improvement, project management,
computer performance evaluation, decision support and more.

Headquartered in Cary, 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 major software vendors in
percentage of revenue devoted to research and development (31 percent in
1994, or $149.4 million of its $482 million total revenue).

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