SAS acquires Teragram to enhance text mining, BI offerings

April 2, 2008

SAShas acquired privately held Teragram, a provider of natural language
processing (NLP) and advanced linguistic technology. The acquisition will
enhance SAS' own text mining and analytical BI offerings, and extend them to
enterprise and mobile search.

More than a decade ago, SAS recognized the importance of text mining, the
analysis of text and other unstructured data such as Web pages, documents,
email, images and other information not stored in a structured database. “The
addition of Teragram's domain expertise and NLP technology will change the
landscape of the BI and analytics markets,” said SAS CEO Jim Goodnight. “Teragram's
technologies augment, strengthen and extend SAS' ability to combine structured
and unstructured data -- not only in our text mining solution but embedded
across the entire SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform -- to drive better
answers faster.”

Teragram, a 40-person firm headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., will be run as
a SAS company. Terms of the acquisition deal were not disclosed. Teragram's
NLP technology is well-established, with a customer base including CNN,
Forbes.com, NYTimes Digital, Sony, WashingtonPost.com, Wolters Kluwer, the World
Bank and Yahoo!

“As the data explosion continues, companies need an intelligent way to make
sense of it all, whether data is in structured databases or in the huge variety
of unstructured sources,” said Yves Schabes, President of Teragram. “Teragram
and its technology fit perfectly into SAS' analytics and text mining efforts,
as SAS continues to innovate in this rapidly growing market. We're pleased to
join a company that delivers the software businesses need to blend structured
and unstructured data and reach better, timelier and more accurate decisions.

SAS has been buying companies with specific and complementary technologies
that enhance and extend its own software lineup and help it better serve
customers. Said Goodnight. “The vast majority of this innovation is organic,
coming from our world-class R&D and marketing efforts. Yet we're always on
the lookout for great technology that complements our own and that helps us meet
customer needs.”

The acquisition announcement came at SAS Global Forum, the largest annual SAS
users group conference, attended by more than 3,000 business and IT users of SAS
software and solutions yesterday.