Business intelligence and analytics firms SAS recorded a 5% surge in revenue during 2010, pushing the company to record figures.
Global revenue for 2010 was $2.43bn, up 5.2% on 2009 figures. Revenue from its business analytics unit rose 26%. Total operating revenue from its UK operations rose 13.1%, the company said, while software sales grew 12.6%.
The company owes a lot of its growth in 2010 to the emerging markets; double-digit percentage gains were achieved in most of Asia and Latin America, and the Middle East, the firm said. The US contributed 46% of the firm’s revenue, followed by EMEA on 42%. The remaining 12% came from the Asia Pacific region.
"Analytics is used in virtually every industry and branch of government," said SAS founder and CEO Jim Goodnight. "The predictive power of analytics can make a difference by helping you see further into the distance so you can make adjustments faster and with more confidence."
The firm is also quietly confident about 2011 growth, despite the challenging economic situation. "The long-term effects of the economic downturn still aren’t known," said SAS senior vice president Jim Davis, "but I feel confident about the future based on our revenue results this year and conversations we’ve had with customers in every industry about improving their business processes with analytics."
SAS competes with the likes of Oracle, IBM, SAP and Microsoft in the BI space.
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In November last year CBR profiled SAS and its leader Dr. Jim Goodnight. You can read his thoughts on OLAP, CEP and open source BI here.
