Question: What year was the software appliance company founded ?

text: SAS Institute
Acquisitions

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 300 people attended the first SAS user conference in Kissimmee, Florida that year. 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. SAS' tradition of polling users for suggestions to improve the software through the SASWare Ballot was adopted during its first year of operation. Many of the company's employee perks, such as fresh fruit, reasonable work hours and free M&M's every Wednesday became part of the company's practices that first year. In the late 1970s, the company established its first marketing department. SAS started building its current headquarters in a forested area of Cary, North Carolina in 1980. Later that year it started providing on-site daycare in order to keep an employee who was planning on being a stay-at-home mom.
Year Company Business Country
2012 rPath , Inc Software appliance United States
2012 aiMatch , Inc Digital ad serving technology United States
2011 AssetLink Integrated Marketing Management United States
2010 Vision Systems and Technology ( VSTI ) Advanced Analytics Professional Services United States
2010 Memex Intelligence Management Software Scotland
2008 Teragram Natural Language Processing United States
2008 IDeaS Revenue Management Software for the hospitality industry United States
2006 Veridiem Customer Intelligence United States
2003 Marketmax Merchandise Planning and Analytics Software United States
2003 Risk Advisory Risk Management United States
2003 OpRisk Analytics LLC Management Consulting Services United States
2002 Verbind Software Behavioral Tracking and Event-Triggering Software United States
2002 ABC Technologies Inc Software Developer and Wholesaler United States
2001 Intrinsic Ltd Campaign Management Software United Kingdom
2000 DataFlux Data Quality , Data Integration and Master Data Management United States
1997 Statview Life Sciences software from Abacus Concepts Business Analytics United States
1993 GESCAN International , Inc Document and Workflow Management Systems United States
1988 NeoVisuals Inc 3D Computer Graphics and Animation Software United States
1986 The Lattice C compiler , often considered the first C programming language on the IBM PC C Compiler United States
1984 The System 2000 Database Management System from Intel Corporation Database Management United States