SAS | The Power to Know Products & Solutions Industries Support Learn SAS Partners Community About SAS Home Company Information About SAS Giving you The Power to Know® since 1976 Some people see data as facts and figures. But it’s more than that. It’s the lifeblood of your business. It contains your organization's history. And it’s trying to tell you something. SAS helps you make sense of the message. As the leader in business analytics software and services, SAS transforms your data into insights that give you a fresh perspective on your business. You can identify what’s working. Fix what isn’t. And discover new opportunities. We can help you turn large amounts of data into knowledge you can use, and we do it better than anyone. It’s no wonder an overwhelming majority of customers continue to use SAS year after year. We believe it’s because we hire great people to create great software and services. SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, SAS helps customers at more than 80,000 sites make better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®. SAS® Analytics in Action More than four decades of experience and innovation. Discover why SAS is the analytics leader. Learn more Mission SAS delivers proven solutions that drive innovation and improve performance. Values Approachable Customer-Driven Swift & Agile Innovative Trustworthy Company Facts & Financials Customer Number of Countries Installed SAS has customers in 148 countries. Total Worldwide Customer Sites Our software is installed at more than 80,000 business, government and university sites. Fortune Global 500® Customers 91 of the top 100 companies on the 2015 Fortune Global 500® are SAS customers. Employee Worldwide Employees 14,048 total employees Breakdown by Geography United States: 7,097 World Headquarters (Cary, NC): 5,616 Canada: 336 Latin America: 438 Europe, Middle East and Africa: 3,736 Asia Pacific: 2,441 Financial Worldwide Revenue 2015 Revenue: US$3.16 billion Historical revenue data Reinvestment in R&D 2015 R&D investment: 25% of revenue History SAS (pronounced "sass") once stood for "statistical analysis system." It began at North Carolina State University as a project to analyze agricultural research. Demand for such software capabilities began to grow, and SAS was founded in 1976 to help customers in all sorts of industries – from pharmaceutical companies and banks to academic and governmental entities. SAS – both the software and the company – thrived throughout the next few decades. Development of the software attained new heights in the industry because it could run across all platforms, using the multivendor architecture for which it is known today. While the scope of the company has spread across the globe, the encouraging and innovative corporate culture has remained the same. Explore each era of our company history through various photos and descriptions of how SAS came to be. 1966-1976 1976-1980 1980s 1990s 2000s Magnetic tapes hold vast amounts of data. Before there was SAS In 1966, there was no SAS. But there was a need for a computerized statistics program to analyze vast amounts of agricultural data collected through United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants. Development of such software was critically important to members of the University Statisticians Southern Experiment Stations, a consortium of eight land-grant universities that received the majority of their research funding from the USDA. The schools came together under a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a general-purpose statistical software package to analyze all the agricultural data they were generating. The resulting program, the Statistical Analysis System, gave SAS both the basis for its name and its corporate beginnings. Read the 2015 Annual Report. Download now Learn why SAS is a great work place. View now Check out recent awards. Learn more Connect Blogs Contact Events News RSS Support Communities Customer Support Certification Code & Sample Notes Documentation SAS Books Training User Groups Insights & Trends Analytics Big Data Business Intelligence Data Management Fraud & Security Marketing Risk Management Quick Links Careers How to Buy White Papers Webinars Resource Center e-Newsletters Privacy Statement | Terms of Use | © SAS Institute Inc. All Rights Reserved Back to Top