Dave Botha, IBM SA country marketing executive says the two companies have significantly strengthened their partnership during 2004.

"Although we have worked together in the past, the collaboration typically resulted from reacting to opportunities in the market," Botha says.

"This year has seen IBM and SAS partner more strongly on a higher level. As a result, we are starting to see tangible benefits, and so, I believe, are our customers."

The local partnership is intended to mirror a global alliance between the two ICT giants.

Together, IBM and SAS aim to offer business intelligence solutions which help clients increase customer profitability, improve the return of marketing campaigns and gain an enterprise-wide view of their business performance.

Companies in mass-consumer industries, such as telecommunications, financial services and retail, are under intense pressure to increase customer profitability and lifetime value by providing their customers with relevant services and product offerings.

They can only do this with complete and accurate intelligence on their customers.

"SAS helps us provide solutions which deliver rapid return on investment and tangible business benefits for our clients, who realise that optimising their own customer base is a key competitive advantage," Botha points out. "Using business intelligence solutions to analyse and streamline supplier relationships or identify unprofitable customers can directly impact the bottom line."

In terms of the partnership, SAS' solutions for customer relationship management, marketing automation and strategic performance management are offered as part of IBM SA Global Services' Enterprise Customer Analytics solution.

IBM consultants are trained in integrating SAS business intelligence solutions with existing transactional systems and other IBM e-business applications.

Another service offering is the integration of SAS business intelligence solutions and IBM's DB2 Universal Database to further enhance performance on all IBM server platforms.

"This agreement demonstrates IBM's commitment to offer the best business intelligence offering of software, hardware and services to our customers. IBM always looks to partner with leaders in their field," Botha says.