Computing Canada: SAS ready to deliver on EIS promise - SAS Institute Inc. demonstrates an executive

NEW YORK -- It's a tradition now. Every year, James Goodnight, chief executive officer and founder of SAS Institute Inc. gets up in front of a few thousand SAS users and does a little demo of an executive information system (EIS).

This year's 18th annual SAS User Group International (SUGI) meeting at Radio City Music Hall proved no exception.

There was Goodnight, on stage, showing just how easy it can be to build and use an EIS.

Once again, he clicked in on a games icon, and as SAS users looked on, played two games of Blackjack. He beat the dealer both times.

It was at a session later in the week that one SAS user, Khasha Dehnad, manager, decision support, executive information, at New York's Depository Trust Co., demonstrated that an EIS can be a powerful tool as well as a nice toy.

Dehnad said he'd always believed management at Depository needed an EIS, but it proved to be a difficult sell. His advice to other users: don't tell upper management what it is.

In an interview, Dehnad said the turning point came when a new president came on board who lived by Management By Objectives (MBO), a method of management based on setting goals and making sure they are met.

"I didn't sell it as an EIS, I told them it was MBO. I didn't talk about the technology," said Dehnad. "We (MIS) spent weeks and weeks reviewing MBOs and for two months we focused on business needs only. We were able to harmonize EIS with MBO. A tool should be able to match a management philosophy."

Depository Trust's implementation extended from the president down through various layers of management, and tied into the corporate database. Depository is one of the top 10 DB2 sites in the U.S.

"The problem is there are 500 to 600 goals," said Dehnad. "You have to report on each one ... but the paper base made it quite difficult to manage."

Dehnad said there's no comparison between pre- and post-EIS. Now, the company can "turn around in a couple of hours or a couple of months what it took a Cobol programmer years to develop."

With testimonials like that, SAS believes the market may be ripe for the taking.

The SAS/EIS product has actually been in the making for a couple of years with hundreds of sites using an "experimental release." A production release of SAS/EIS became officially available with the announcement of the new SAS System Release 6.08, unveiled at the user group meeting.

Jamie Robbins, applications development marketing manager at Cary, N.C.-based SAS, says while all kinds of tools are available, most don't tie into corporate data.

"That is a strength we don't show off often enough."

Robbins believes the EIS market is on hold because there is so much uncertainty about graphical user interfaces and hardware platforms.

A lot depends also on "getting corporate databases in shape ... and when you do that so much of the conversation turns to client-server."

On that theme, SAS outlined its support for a "multiple client-server model." This came with some strong words of caution from Goodnight. Stating that "a single model for client-server computing is inadequate" and railing against the proliferation of desktop SQL-based query products, Goodnight called today's assortment of so-called client-server tools "partial solutions at best.

"At worst, they lock the customer into a single strategy incapable of meeting the more complex procesing requirements of a large enterprise," said Goodnight.

"We will use the words client-server," he added at a press luncheon, "but what we really want to talk about is enterprise computing."