[R] R in the NY Times

[Carlos J. Gil Bellosta]

On Thu, 2009-01-08 at 13:52 -0600, Marc Schwartz wrote:
> Reading the posts on SAS-L since yesterday via Google RSS, where the
> NYT
> article was also posted, some have noted that SAS itself offers online
> support forums (http://support.sas.com/forums/index.jspa). From a
> quick
> review, it looks like the SAS.com forums date back to perhaps early
> 2006, thus possibly accounting for some of the leveling of the posts
> on
> SAS-L recently.

Hello,

Not only that: the corporate intranet of SAS (sections of which are
sometime open for external consultants for certain products) also
contain forums with an uneven traffic flow. These will certainly absorb
part of the traffic that would otherwise hit lists like SAS-L.

In fact, in my five years experience working (also as) a SAS consultant,
I have never posted to SAS-L. However, I have posted (or had my requests
posted by other SAS employees) on these lists.

Having said that, I should also add that R represents a threat to SAS
(which does not stand for Statistical Analysis System for a long time
already) in a business segment that very doubtfully accounts for more
than 5-10% of their revenue. They have to sell about 1000 licenses of
SAS/BASE and SAS/STAT in order to match the annual revenues from a
single license for a single "solution" in a single top tier bank.

It is quite amusing, though, to browse SAS marketing internal
documentation --to which I had access some time ago-- on "how to
compete" against R. The SAS salesperson statement in the article seems
to have been extracted verbatim from them. 

Best regards,

Carlos J. Gil Bellosta
http://www.datanalytics.com