Emerging markets accelerate SAS' growth

MUMBAI, INDIA: SAS, a leader in business intelligence (BI) and analytics, is experiencing strong demand for its software, despite the challenging global economy. SAS is experiencing its fastest rate of revenue growth in the emerging markets of Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe and Latin America. In 2007, SAS revenue grew 28 percent in Brazil, nearly 50 percent in India, almost 60 percent in Russia and 67 percent in China.

It’s no secret that the BI and analytics sectors of the software market are growing faster than the market as a whole. Worldwide BI platform software revenue exceeded $5.1 billion in 2007, a 13 percent increase from 2006, according to a June 2008 report from analyst firm Gartner.

For companies like Reliance Communications and China CITIC Bank, BI and analytics deliver immense benefits:

Reliance Communications Ltd., a telecom services provider in India and throughout Asia, has 54 million customers, ranking it among the top 10 telecom companies in Asia in terms of customer base. Reliance has turned to SAS for a platform of BI and analytics to handle large data volumes with ease.

“With SAS, we get the best of both worlds. We get a powerful technology platform for data integration, analytics and BI that helps us better understand, market to and serve millions of businesses and consumers,” said Sumit Chowdhury, CIO of Reliance Communications. “And we also get telecom industry knowledge built into SAS solutions that helps us address our most critical challenges. As a global company, we’ve embraced business analytics to help us thrive in the very competitive telecommunications market, and SAS’ proven technology and industry experience give us the edge.” SAS will also be used across the entire Reliance ADA Group.

A subsidiary of CITIC Group, China CITIC Bank is China’s seventh-largest business bank in terms of total assets (approximately US$150 billion in 2007). Founded in 1987, it has more than 400 branches and a workforce of more than 15,000. In June, China CITIC selected the SAS Analytic Server platform and SAS Enterprise Miner as one of its software tools for building and testing retail and corporate credit risk rating models. These models are important for managing risk and also play important roles in the bank’s Basel II efforts.

“Managing risk is a delicate balance,” said Dr. Wang ChaoYang, Assistant General Manager of the Risk Policy and Measure Department at China CITIC. “With these models built through SAS software, we will be able to calculate the risk and return of our customers, then find the balance between risk and return for our bank.”

Earlier this year, SAS announced its 31st straight year of revenue growth, achieving US$2.15 billion, up 15 percent from 2006. Intense demand for business analytics, BI, analytics and data integration, propelled this growth.

Paralleling SAS’ experience in Brazil, India, China and Russia, Gartner research also found that the fastest growth for BI and analytics are in several key emerging markets. According to the Gartner report, BI revenue grew 26.1 percent in Asia-Pacific from 2006 to 2007, 27.5 percent in Latin America and 48 percent in Eastern Europe.

“With the US credit crisis, instability in energy markets and overall uncertainty in the global economy, investment in BI and analytics is more resilient than many other software areas,” said Dan Sommer, Senior Research Analyst at Gartner. “The rapid adoption of these technologies in emerging markets like India, China, Russia and Brazil makes sense since BI and analytics can help organizations deal with above-average growth, increasing quantities of data, and intensifying competition.”

“As companies become more global, they look to the next generation of software solutions to help them optimize revenue, increase customer loyalty and satisfaction, and enhance competitiveness,” said Mikael Hagström, SAS’ Executive Vice President for EMEA and Asia Pacific. “BI and analytics are increasingly the answer, whether in mature markets like Western Europe and North America or rapidly emerging markets like India, China, Russia and Brazil.