SAS Turns To VARs To Expand BI Footprint

SAS Institute, the historically direct purveyor of business-intelligence software, has launched its first channel program.

The Cary, N.C.-based company has signed up 29 VARs to date and is aiming for a total of 250 to 350 by 2008 to extend its reach into the SMB market.

Leading the new business unit is Miles Mahoney, a channel veteran who has built partner programs for Borland Software, Business Objects and Crystal Decisions.

"We felt that, given the maturity of business intelligence and where the SMB market is in terms of BI adoption, this was a great opportunity and the right time to move into this channel space," Mahoney says.

VARs initially will be set up to sell six of SAS' 200 products, including those that tackle data integration, analytics, BI and forecasting application needs. In addition to serving the SMB space, partners will be able to sell into SAS' named accounts of more than $1 billion; however, executives told VARBusiness that SAS can step in at its own discretion to take the lead on deals, which could raise a red flag about future channel conflict for partners.

But Mahoney says the company is eliminating potential channel conflict by giving its salespeople incentives to work with and through partners on all deal types. To that end, SAS has added 200 new direct-sales executives to work in concert with partners. Among some of the channel-program offerings are free training, with SAS estimating a 30- to 60-day learning curve for new resellers; 30 percent margins that scale to 40 percent based on volume; and 25 points for renewal sales. Some of the VARs signed up to date include Aviana Global Technologies, Claraview, Comsys, Creative Computing and Mainline Information Systems.

SAS is a bit of an unknown to the channel, and yet it's the world's largest privately held software company with revenue in 2005 of $1.68 billion worldwide. Its channel bid falls in step with a trend in the BI space to bring the highly sophisticated--and often prohibitively expensive--analytics software into smaller and midsize companies. Other BI players, such as Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion, have stepped up their efforts to penetrate that space as well, both with streamlined product offerings and more partner activity.

One of the attractions to SAS is the company's diverse portfolio, which offers solution providers a one-stop shop for analytics, BI, data management and other such software.

The vendor's breadth of high-quality offerings, in combination with the fact that SAS has gone out of its way to give partners what they need (such as channel-friendly software bundles and competitive pricing), is what compelled BridgeBuilder president Scott Spanbauer to sign on.

"We always viewed SAS as the Cadillac or Rolls-Royce of BI products. They always sold direct and were phenomenally more expensive than the competition," Spanbauer says. "But they have tried to modify their pricing and their sales force. They are listening and learning."