 |
Culture at SAS Institute - The World’s Largest Private Software Company
BACKGROUND NOTE
SAS was founded in 1976 by Goodnight, Anthony James Barr (Barr), John Sall (Sall), and Jane Helwig (Helwig). Earlier, Goodnight and Barr, as a part of their doctoral research, had worked on developing programs used to analyze agricultural research data. They developed a statistical program called Statistical Analysis Software that was meant to make data analysis more effective. After the government’s financial backing for their project ended, Goodnight and Barr started leasing out the software to various insurance, banking, agricultural, and pharmaceutical organizations in order to raise money for their research. As they had received the copyrights for the software they developed, they established SAS in partnership with Sall and Helwig. |
|
The company began to grow very quickly and its clients increased from 120 in 1976 to 600 in 1978. Later, Barr and Helwig sold their respective shares and Sall retired. Thus, the entire control passed into Goodnight’s hands. In 1980, the SAS headquarters was set up in a 200- acre area in Cary, North Carolina. The company expanded into the UK the same year and the growth trend continued with more investment in R&D. By 1994, SAS had spread across 29 countries with 3 million customers using its products. In 1999, the revenues generated by SAS were US $ 1.2 billion. During the recession period of 2009 too, SAS had annual revenue of US $ 2.31 billion...
