The big boys are gunning for SAS
But that good life is under threat today as never before. SAS’s specialty, a lucrative niche called business intelligence software, is becoming mainstream. Free, open-source alternatives to some of the company’s products are increasingly popular. On the other end of the spectrum, the heavyweights of the software industry — Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and, especially, I.B.M. — are plunging in and investing billions of dollars.
“It will be a dogfight,” says Bill Hostmann, an analyst at Gartner. “SAS has never faced a competitor like I.B.M. And I do think I.B.M. sees SAS as a big, fatted cow.”
It might be of interest that IBM has been patent hedging all about SAS for years, and that SAS has been trying to encourage change in patent laws to change the ability of IBM to hedge. One suggestion was to push the patent application fee up to $15,000 per ap.
Posted by: Nathanael Snow | December 06, 2009 at 11:58 PM