Business software giant SAS is projecting that its revenue this year will rise a robust 12 percent based on the Cary-based company's performance to date.
Indeed, worldwide revenue during the first three quarters of this year actually rose 15.2 percent, including a 13.6 percent jump in the U.S. market, co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight told a gathering of reporters this morning in the company's Executive Briefing Center at its sprawling Cary campus.
The company's lower year-end projections aren't the result of an expected slowdown in business in the fourth quarter, Goodnight said. Rather, the company's professional services business is at full capacity and can't grow further this year.
"The business is very, very healthy right now," said Jim Davis, senior vice president and chief marketing officer.
Double-digit revenue growth would far outstrip last year's 5.2 percent rise to a record $2.43 billion. The privately held company doesn't disclose its profits.
Its growth is pushing the company, which opened its new Executive Briefing Center in April, to put "a couple of other buildings on the drawing board" for its Cary campus, Goodnight said. Those plans include a new building the company hopes to start constructing in about a year.
SAS already has boosted its worldwide work force by 7.6 percent so far this year -- ahead of its six percent target for the year -- giving it a total of 12,370 workers worldwide. The company has 4,818 workers in Cary after adding 401 local workers this year.
Goodnight said the company passed its 6 percent target and "I have been trying to slow hiring down ever since. But it's like a train; it's hard to slow down. We have so many new, innovative developments that we are working on."
Corporations, government agencies and others use SAS business intelligence and analytics software to analyze their operations and predict trends. Almost half of the company's total revenue comes from "information management" -- that is, creating data warehouses and integrating multiple streams of data.
"Without it, none of the analytic apps are going to work appropriately," Davis said.
SAS is benefitting from several trends, including an increased focus on analyzing "Big Data" made possible by faster, less expensive computing power, Goodnight said. Big Data refers to the massive amounts of information that 21st century companies are able to accumulate about their customers and competitors -- thanks to more efficient, less expensive processing capabilities, Goodnight said.
The company's "new sales," Davis noted, are up 22.6 percent in the U.S. this year and are up even more in Latin America and Europe. That includes sales to brand- new customers or existing customers that have expanded their use of SAS software to other departments.
SAS's revenue expanded throughout the recession -- albeit at a slower pace than when the economy was performing well. Indeed, its revenue has increased every year since it was founded in 1976.
David Ranii has been a business reporter at The News & Observer since 1993. Over the years he has covered information technology, banking, insurance, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, media businesses and real estate. Contact him at 919-829-4877 or 
Comments
Robber Baron
Tue, 10/25/2011 - 19:05 — GLGENTRYSomebody has to stop this greedy multi-millionaire robber baron. Do you believe the nerve?
He's plotting to bring in more slaves to do his bidding so he can get even fatter off their labors while tens of thousands of political science, sociology, psychology, and English literature majors who owe hundreds of millions in student debt can't even find a decent executive level job anywhere! Join the protest now! Stop the GREED! Power to the people! Occupy SA!!!!
Occupy SAS!
SAS is a sparkling best in high end capitalism.
Tue, 10/25/2011 - 20:41 — glolingerTo GLGENTRY:
I'm setting here wondering if your comment is some kind of humor, or you're just incredibly uninformed. If it's humor, it's just a little too dark for me to recognize as humor. If it's not an attempt at humor, I hardly know where to start with you.
My friends and relatives would label me as far over toward what some term "bleeding heart liberal", so you have to understand the following does not come from some far right "all capitalists are good" viewpoint. SAS, and Dr. Goodnight, have EARNED my praise.
SAS is the epitome of a company that has both employees and community at heart. It's the American ideal of a good idea built and grown into something profitable and useful to all its customers. He has managed to grow his business, and KEEP all his well-paid employees (no layoffs) through every recession since he opened for business. During a recession he doubles down on research spending and HIRES into R&D. I know. I worked there from '91 through '09, when I retired. In this recession (The Great Recession), he WAS knocked back to a mere 5 point something % growth. There were no layoffs. He uses layoffs at other companies to cherry-pick top employees laid off by companies who slice open their veins to keep the stock analysts happy, and then uses those top employees to further distance himself from the competition.
Goodnight's charitible contributions are legend, though you will never catch the very private Dr. G. tooting his own horn. I won't bother to bore you with those details, because with only a modicum of effort you can find those out yourself, and you should have before you opened your mouth.
SAS is the proof that capitalism does NOT have to be greedy and predatory with employees, does NOT have to be an enemy of the communities they live in, uninvolved in their issues, does NOT have to trash the environment to make their way. SAS is the sparkling proof that the kind of greed, idiotic bumbling, and outright criminal behavior that some are rightly protesting in the "OCCUPY xxx" events is NOT a NECESSARY part of making a sharp profit in a business that pays off for customers more than they pay for the product.
SAS has been at the top of best places to work lists, sometimes first, for decades.
If there is any one company that one might suspect has put Cary on the map, SAS would have to be it. And its four thousand plus recession-proof local employees in good paying jobs and endless additions of new, environmentally green buildings on SAS campus are certainly a major reason that this area has had less battering by the current recession than others.
Get your facts right before you diss someone.
Guy Olinger.
Amen.
Tue, 10/25/2011 - 21:31 — uBniceWell said!
Occupy SAS
Tue, 10/25/2011 - 17:12 — BlueDevilishIt is reported that Goodnight is a billionaire, and now it appears he's getting richer even quicker. God help the poor exploited workers laboring for peanuts at SAS so a billionaire can make another million he doesn't need. What has SAS done for the common man? Exploitation. Next thing you know, Goodnight will be taking jobs to Haiti or China or Kenya for the purpose of creating sweatshops and bringing poverty to those people. If I didn't have to schlep to my exploitive job every day and earn my peanuts, I'd occupy Raleigh and hold up a big sign that says: Boycott SAS! (if I could even understand what it is it sells). Clearly, Goodnight's capitalist money should be taken from him and given to the masses, of whom I am one. NOW!
bright and dark
Tue, 10/25/2011 - 13:48 — MozarteanFirst of all, I'm very happy about the good fortune of SAS. It's a very welcome bright spot in an otherwise bleak Tar Heel employment landscape.
And yet...
SAS creates new and ever more powerful ways to snoop on people, places and things. Data of all kinds, transactions, buying likes and dislikes, all about you, your mom, your cousin twice removed, your kids, their medical information, what you ate for dinner last night, data we can't even imagine yet as valuable.
This is the kind of data for example, that would power those personalized billboards in the mall in the film "Minority Report." You remember. Through a retina scan.
Oh well. If that's our brave new world, I'm glad it is here in North Carolina.
What sas does with data
Tue, 10/25/2011 - 21:46 — glolingerJust a few examples.
Examines in real time a huge stream of credit card purchases, and using top-secret algorithms identifies pending purchases that do not fit your personal pattern, thus catching credit card and ID theft before it can suck you dry.
Examines a company's billing streams that do not fit the pattern to expose fraud and larceny. In the case of the government, to expose billing fraud early enough to do something about it.
Watches money streams between banks to identify money laundering.
Super secret stuff that helps identify terrorists that want to blow us into body parts.
Helps a company analyze all it's warranty returns to identify hot spots, and sources of failure to improve product quality. This way money spent to generally improve product quality actually does improve product quality.
Allows a company to customize their data processing to better serve their particular customers.
Allows a company to manage their very expensive data processing resources, identify misuse, unclog bottlenecks, and protect against fraud.
I would point out that by far, by far, the data that companies are analyzing is their own, and trying to make the best use of it.
Allows a company to see when a product is tailing off, and where, and why.
They trademark themselves as "The Power to Know". And so they are. It is the "morality" of the companies that use SAS that is always at issue. They can dump their manufacturing effluent in the river with or without SAS on their mainframes. Do you really see being able to see customers' true likes and dislikes as Machievellian?
Why, oh why
Tue, 10/25/2011 - 19:20 — GLGENTRYMozartean, whatever that is, you have truly gotten to the heart of the matter. Why, oh why, can't someone build a giant business, that employees thousands of people, that is based on unicorns and rainbows? I'm thinking that you grew up believing that Walt Disney movies showing animals talking to each other in the forest were documentaries. Come to think of it, that robber barron Disney is no better than this robber baron Goodnight.
Dr. G. a robber baron? Rubbish.
Tue, 10/25/2011 - 21:18 — glolingerSee my earlier reply to your first post. With this post as context, now clearly the earlier post was not an attempt at dark humor, just a disgorge of ignorance. SAS is as close to unicorns and rainbows as you are going to get and still run an actually profitable self-sustaining business. There are plenty of companies out there that might deserve the "robber baron" moniker. SAS is NOT one of them. Go pick on one that deserves it.