When Altair acquired World Programming for an undisclosed sum in December 2021, it was fully aware of the company’s legal situation. ![]() That case resulted in an injunction against the company operating in the large US market, which World Programming had never successfully penetrated. All of the lawsuits in Europe were resolved in World Programming’s favor, according to Do Couto, while SAS won one legal challenge in the US (which hinged on the copying of SAS Institute support materials into WPS support documentation). The company sued World Programming in Europe and the US. SAS did not take the challenge sitting down. Hundreds of companies in Europe and Asia eventually were users of the SAS runtime alternative. The company devised a compiler and a runtime for SAS code, called WPS Analytics, and began selling it to SAS customers in the UK’s finance, telecommunications, and healthcare industries.Įventually, World Programming began selling to companies in Asia who wanted an alternative to the official runtime from SAS. And they continue to work with SAS to keep things status quo.” Compiler and Runtime AlternativeĪbout 20 years ago, a UK company named World Programming decided to go head-to-head with the analytics giant SAS. “They just continue to hit the run button, so they know it works, and they know they can get the output. “For the most part, a lot of the organizations are just leaving that component of the business as-is,” Do Couto said. It’s a classic case of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” according to Mark Do Couto, senior vice president of data analytics at Altair Engineering. As a result, many of these companies are loathe to touch the SAS code, and they continue to pay licensing fees to the SAS company for the right to execute it. The lack of good code converters means that a move from SAS to Python is practically a rewrite, which raises red flags for risk-averse corporations. While many of these customers would prefer to have their routines in a more “modern” environment like Python, that’s not an easy journey. ![]() In many cases, the original SAS developers have long since left the companies, leaving efficient and reliable SAS code as their legacy. Much of this SAS code has run reliably for decades on platforms ranging from Windows desktops to giant IBM System Z mainframes and Power servers. However, by all accounts, there remains a sizable group of SAS customers with large amounts of SAS code that has not been moved into Viya. ![]() SAS is considered to be the world’s largest privately held software company, with 2019 revenues of $3.1 billion (JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock) The company, which boasted 83,000 customers in 147 countries supports just a few years ago, has supported Python in AI and analytic libraries in Viya, its modern flagship offering that it’s encouraging its giant installed base to migrate to. SAS–the Cary, North Carolina company–has made inroads with the open analytic community. The meteoric rise of Python, in particular, has many companies casting their analytic bets with the uber popular scripting language, which can be used to program a slew of data-related tasks, including data engineering, analytics, and AI. The SAS code and SAS Institute’s tools and runtime engines spread into all industries, cementing themselves as the undisputable standard for corporate analytics in the US and abroad.īut that analytic hegemony has been tested in recent years thanks to the rise of open languages like Python and R. American companies that have relied on SAS-based data analytics routines for decades but would like to separate themselves from the SAS Institute and its maintenece fees may be interested in another SAS runtime option that recently became available from Altair.įor decades, SAS Institute was the dominant provider of analytics software, based on the widespread use of the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) language that its co-founders, including SAS CEO Jim Goodnight, created in the late 1960s at North Carolina State University.
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