CARY – SAS continues to prepare for an initial public offering, or an IPO.

That’s according to a presentation delivered virtually on Tuesday morning by Gavin Day, senior vice president, corporate programs, for SAS.

Day, one of a number of SAS employees who delivered a Zoom presentation, spoke about the privately-held organization’s partnership development, and noted that the organization is leveraging partnerships “as we drive toward IPO readiness.”

Day noted the company is building momentum through its partnership with Microsoft.

SAS also shared financial performance from its cloud business, as well the results from third-party research conducted on behalf of the organization.  SAS also shared details of a new partnership with Cosmo Tech and provided an update the latest on the company’s responsible AI initiative.

“As SAS becomes IPO ready,” said Day.  “SAS is the founder and future of analytics.”

The company previously confirmed to WRAL TechWire that it had considered exploring an initial public offering and a that it could become IPO ready by 2024.  The company is privately held, with co-founders Jim Goodnight and John Sall holding all shares.

SAS puts in place plan to go public via stock offering in 2024

Cloud first

In the briefing, SAS reported growth in each of its operating regions for its cloud business.  In the Americas, growth was 14%, and in Asia Pacific, the growth was 48%, said Jay Upchurch, the executive vice president and chief information officer for SAS, in a virtual presentation.

Along with the growth, Upchurch reported that the company increased new cloud customer acquisition, with an increase in the company’s customer base of 26% year-over-year and revenue by 19%.

“We are winning with both our current install base and net new customers,” said Upchurch.

“We’re excited to expand this program even more in the years to come,” added Upchurch, noting that the company will focus on three areas when it comes to cloud.  First, said Upchurch, SAS will meet customers “where they are in their cloud adoption journey.”  Second, SAS plans to introduce more cloud-based integrations within the cloud ecosystem, to enhance customer choice.  Third, the company will introduce new techniques that Upchurch said would eliminate concerns around driving up usage costs.

SAS highlighted case studies from Georgia-Pacific in the virtual event, and in a statement released today, noted the work of the North Carolina Collaboratory in leveraging SAS technology to analyze internet-of-things data from COVID-19 vaccine storage freezers to strengthen integrity and improve delivery in rural and underserved parts of the state.

SAS and NC Collaboratory partnership increases access to COVID vaccines while reducing waste

ROI through partnership

The third-party study conducted for SAS by Forrester looked at the total economic impact between the partnership between SAS and Microsoft.  The full results will be released next week, according to a company statement.

According to the research, companies yielded a 204% return on investment across three years, and experienced a 14-month payback period.

The study looked at companies that have deployed SAS Viya, the company’s cloud-native artificial intelligence and data management platform, on Microsoft Azure.

Upchurch added that, even with those measures, the companies studied also enjoyed a faster pace due to the analytic insights.

“Many organizations today experience a multitude of friction points on their path from data to decisions,” said Upchurch in a statement, released earlier today by SAS.  “Our strategic partnership with Microsoft aims to simplify this process to improve trusted decisions and accelerate innovation.”

Cloud, Microsoft are driving growth, say SAS executives in laying out 2021 agenda