SAS data mining tools drive growing segment of business intelligence market

Worldwide revenue for the BI software tools market increased by 1.6 percent over 2001 with a forecasted 2002-2007 compound annual growth rate of 4.1 percent. SAS' growth rate remained positive this year, exceeding its performance from the previous year, largely as a result of the breadth of SAS' data warehousing, business intelligence and analytical software.

"While continuing to invest heavily in R&D, SAS continues to provide one of the broadest portfolios of BI tools, which the company sells along with its data warehousing tools and analytic applications," said Dan Vesset, research manager for IDC's Analytics and Data Warehousing practice. "SAS' long term leadership of the growing data mining software market positions the company well for the increasing importance of predictive analytics in BI."

IDC states that the BI market is composed of end-user query, reporting and analysis tools; data mining tools; and packaged data mart/warehouse tools. The data mining market, the fastest growing segment of the BI market per IDC, increased 5.1 percent to reach $486 million in 2002.

"As for the Middle East region Business Intelligence market is on the rise, the market is estimated to grow this year more than 50%, fueled by demand from the Financial, Government and Telecommunications market" said Basel Tutunji, SAS Regional Manager for the Middle East. "SAS continues to be a regional player in the Data Mining Tools and Datawarehouse projects, our data mining solutions enable us to deliver predictive analytics to a large audience - from the statistician to the non-technical business user - to help them get accurate and timely intelligence to make better, faster business decisions. There's simply no better way to help organizations gain a competitive edge and get the ROI they need to thrive in this economy."