SAS Institute has acquired Statview software from Berkeley, California based Abacus Concepts for an undisclosed sum. The Cary, North Carolina based software house is hoping the deal will give it access to a new audience of users in areas not currently covered by the company’s existing broad statistical offerings. Abacus is currently shipping version 4.5 of the software package, a desktop statistical analysis tool targeted at the specialist life sciences market and designed for use by researchers in specific areas like education and medicine. It currently has around 75,000 users worldwide. SAS says it plans to continue to sell the new software as a separate product alongside its existing JMP desktop statistical package, which it says is aimed at engineering industry users. The products differ in the kind of statistical offerings available and the user interface; unlike the existing offering, Statview features a range of different presentation options for users who want to publish research data in graph form. Templates in the latest edition include descriptive statistics, correlation’s graphs and contingency tables. SAS plans to make the software compatible with its existing integrated toolset and will enable it to share data with JMP and the SAS system. The company says it will continue to support existing users and is currently working on version 5.0 of the product which will feature enhanced analytical features and is set for release in early 1998. Statview 4.5 is currently up on most versions of Windows and Macintosh.
