SAS Institute

1966–1979: Founding and early history

The Statistical Analysis System (SAS) began as a project at North Carolina State University's agricultural department. It was originally led by Anthony James Barr in 1966, then joined by NCSU graduate student James Goodnight in 1967 and John Sall in 1973. In the early 1970s, the software was primarily leased to other agricultural departments in order to analyze the effect soil, weather and seed varieties had on crop yields. The project was funded by the National Institutes of Health and later by a coalition of university statistics programs called the University Statisticians of the Southern Experiment Stations.

By 1976, the software had 100 customers and that year, 300 people attended the first SAS user conference in Kissimmee, Florida. Goodnight, Barr, Sall and another early participant, Jane Helwig, founded SAS Institute Inc. as a private company on July 1, 1976, in offices across the street from the university. Barr and Helwig later sold their interest in the company.

During its first year of operation, SAS adopted a tradition of polling users for suggestions to improve the software through the SASware Ballot. Many of the company's employee perks, such as fresh fruit, reasonable work hours and free M&M's every Wednesday became part of its practices that first year. In the late 1970s, the company established its first marketing department.

1980–2018

SAS started building its current headquarters in a forested area of Cary, North Carolina in 1980. Later that year, it began providing on-site daycare in order to keep an employee who had planned to leave her job to care for her child at home. By 1984, SAS had expanded the benefits programs it offered to employees and their families, and begun building a fitness center, medical center, on-site cafe and other facilities. SAS became known as a good place to work and was frequently recognized by national magazines like BusinessWeek, Working Mother and Fortune for its work environment.

The company began its relationship with Microsoft and development for Windows operating systems in 1989. Shortly afterwards it established partnerships with database companies like Oracle, Sybase and Informix.

During the 1980s, SAS was one of Inc. Magazine's fastest growing companies in America from 1979 and 1985. It grew more than ten percent per year from $10 million in revenues in 1980 to $1.1 billion by 2000. In 2007, SAS revenue was $2.15 billion, and in 2013 its revenue was $3.02 billion. By the late 1990s, SAS was the largest privately held software company. The Associated Press reported that analysts attributed the growth to aggressive research and development (R&D) spending. It had the highest ratio of its revenues spent on R&D in the industry for eight years, setting a record of 34 percent of its revenues in 1993, as it was working on a new menu-based interface. In 1998, a larger proportion of its revenue was spent on R&D than at most other software companies; in 1997, this figure was more than double the industry average.

SAS created an education division in 1997 to create software for schools, including the newly formed Cary Academy. In 2003 the Bank of America Foundation purchased and donated licenses for the software to 400 schools in North Carolina. SAS funded its first advertising program in 2000 with a $30 million television and radio campaign.

The company considered making 25 percent of its ownership stake available on the stock market and providing employees with stock-options during the dot-com bubble before the following downturn, but ultimately chose not to. SAS was one of the few technology companies that did well during the downturn and hired aggressively to take advantage of available staff.

Operations

SAS Institute has grown in revenue each year since it was incorporated in 1976. It generated over $3 billion in sales revenue in 2023. About 20-30% of the company's revenues are spent on research and development, which is the highest ratio among software companies of its size. In 1994, Computerworld found that out of the world's 50 largest software companies, SAS spent 2.5 times the industry average on R&D. It had customers in 145 countries as of 2019. As of 2010 revenues come relatively evenly from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. According to the company's 2014 financial reporting, its revenues are currently 46.7 percent from the Americas, 41.4 from Europe, Middle East and Africa, and 11.9 percent from Asia-Pacific. SAS has about 5,200 employees at its headquarters in Cary, North Carolina, 1,600 employees elsewhere in the US and 6,900 in Europe, Asia, Canada or Latin America. CEO James Goodnight owns about two-thirds of the company and co-founder John Sall owns the other one-third. In 2022, the company was included on Forbes' list of the largest private companies in the United States, ranked by revenue. It was one of the largest privately held software providers in the world in 2023.

The company has contributed to the growth and economic development of Cary, attracting thousands of employees. Cary mayor Harold Weinbrecht and former mayor Koka Booth each worked at the company before entering politics.

Software

It develops, supports and markets a suite of analytics software also called SAS (statistical analysis system), which captures, stores, modifies, analyzes and presents data. The SAS system and SAS programming language are used by most of the Fortune 500. The SAS software includes a Base SAS component that performs analytical functions and more than 200 other modules that add graphics, spreadsheets or other features.

Some of the uses for SAS' software include analyzing financial transactions for indications of fraud, optimizing prices for retailers, or evaluating the results of clinical trials. As of 2012, SAS is the largest market-share holder in the advanced analytics segment with a 36.2 percent share and the fifth largest for business intelligence software with a 6.9 percent share. SAS typically sells its software with an emphasis on subscription models that include support and updates, as opposed to software licenses.