SAS is not for Sale (or is it)
Interesting interview with Dr Goodnight over at InformationWeek.com.
What interested me was not the standard “we are not for sale” line from Dr Goodnight, or the fact that lots of the large vendors have tried to engage in purchase discussion, but the comments at the end.
Probably a case of sour grapes from ex-employees, but then again…
From my point of view he is right that anybody that purchased SAS would slash and burn staff, and unlike people like Larry Ellison, Dr Goodnight has always seemed (in the media at least) comfortable with a being a wealthy man, but no desire to be the wealthiest, so I can’t see him deciding to sell anytime soon.
On the flip side he is no longer a spring chicken and SAS will encounter much stronger competition from the Microsoft/Oracle/IBM juggernaut’s in the future so maybe he will eventually lose the ability to choose one way or the other.
There was always a view that the migraton of the International business into Carey was a move to make the business more streamlined and saleable. Perhaps it was just a way to make it more agile.
As I have posted before I still think a merge with somebody like HP is inevitable in the long term.
The comments to that article reminded me of a something I was told by a long term SAS employee a few years ago. Apparently if you were a Senior person in Carey you dreaded getting a phonecall from Dr Goodnight asking you to “meet him at the airport”. As the story goes it was advisable to take the cab fare for your trip home with you, as you would no longer be able to expense it after meeting him.
If the story is true then at least he is able to make the hard decisions when required….
Tags: HP, Oracle, SAS for sale, SAS Institute