We’ve gotten a
lot of attention since the IBM acquisition of SPSS for being a privately-held company and our desire to stay that way. While looking at all the coverage we’ve gotten, I keep coming back to an analogy made by Mary Hayes Weier in her InformationWeek post, “
SAS Institute: There Is No For Sale Sign In Our Yard.”
Imagine you're a homeowner standing in the yard watering the flowers when a potential buyer walks up and makes an offer. Even if you aren’t thinking of selling, you’d probably stop and listen.
“Indeed, at this point, SAS seems content to keep watering its flowers,” she said. And it’s true.
We have been growing wonderful things in our garden for over 34 years, but a lot of these stories talk about us as being a well-kept secret. When you’re a private company you don’t get the coverage that a publicly-traded company does.
Over the years, other publicly-traded companies got recognition and media attention for their contributions to business intelligence and business analytics. Our role was often overlooked because we don’t generate those exciting share value stories. It can be a little frustrating.
But it’s pretty clear now that our strategy has paid off, and not just in a spike in media attention. We’re the largest independent vendor in our space, we have high customer retention and we put a much higher percentage of our revenue back into R&D than public companies could ever get away with.
Our garden is of great interest because of the downturn and the pain publicly-traded companies are experiencing. Buying our nicely-tended patch must look a lot more appealing than all the digging and weeding they’ve got ahead of them.
Jim Davis, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for SAS, is responsible for providing strategic direction for SAS products, solutions and services and presenting the SAS brand worldwide. Additionally, he oversees a number of operational units including Publications, Education, and Alliances and Channels. In this blog he writes about the larger issues that affect a global business, and what it takes to be competitive in the 21st century. Read more about Jim.
