SAS corporate timeline

1972: N.C. State University faculty members Jim Goodnight and Jim Barr emerge as project leaders on a new USDA / NIH program called Statistical Analysis System.

Jane Helwig, another Statistics Department employee at NCSU, joined the project as documentation writer, and John Sall, a graduate student and programmer, rounded out the core SAS team.

1976: More than 300 people attended the first SAS Users Conference. Goodnight, Barr, Helwig and Sall left NCSU and founded SAS Institute Inc.

1977: SAS named to Datamation Magazine's DataPro Software Honor Roll. It continued to appear on that list for the next three years.

1978: SAS had 21 employees and 600 SAS customer sites.

1979: The company granted its first overseas software license to Databank of New Zealand, and SAS software was adapted to run under IBM's VM/CMS system.

1980: SAS released SAS/GRAPH® software for information presentation graphics and SAS/ETS® software for econometric and time series analysis. The company also opened its first subsidiary, SAS Software Limited, in the UK.

1980: SAS headquarters moves to Cary, N.C.

1981: SAS opens day-care facility on its new Cary campus.

The growth of SAS in the 80s was phenomenal. Inc. magazine named SAS one of the fastest-growing companies in America for five consecutive years. By 1985, SAS source code was rewritten once again, this time in C language, abandoning the IBM-only PL/1 language. This led to creating a software system that would run across all platforms - the multivendor architecture that the company is known for today. The new headquarters campus grew from one building with offices for 50 employees to 18 buildings, including a training center, publications warehouse, and video studio. SAS also expanded its geographic boundaries, opening new offices on four continents and its first U.S. regional sales offices. By the end of the decade, SAS had nearly 1,500 employees worldwide.

1999: SAS Australia was the first SAS office outside the U.S. recognized as a great place to work.

During the 1990s, SAS grew its workforce to more than 7,000 people worldwide. The company introduced its first vertical sales group with the release of SAS/PH-Clinical® software for the pharmaceutical industry. This also led to the establishment of the Business Solutions division, responsible for solutions such as SAS Financial Management and SAS Human Capital Management (formerly named CFO Vision® and HR Vision®). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also selected SAS technology as the standard for new drug applications in 2002.

2001: SAS celebrates 25th Anniversary with new logo and new "The Power to Know" tagline.

2001: Acquired the knowledge portal BetterManagement.com

2003: SAS introduced the Information Evolution Model (IEM)

2003: SAS acquired Marketmax and Risk Advisory

2005: Named as one of 22 members of FORTUNE magazine's "Hall of Fame"

2005: SAS employees begin blogging.

2006: Information Revolution penned by SAS' Jim Davis, Gloria Miller, and Allan Russell is published.

2007: SAS Global Forum replaced the SAS Users Group International event, drawing thousands of users

2007: First external company blog appeared (from SAS UK).

2007: SAS moves into Web 2.0 space. SASCom Voices and SASCommunity.org launch.

2008: Company boasts more than 300 internal bloggers, including nearly 20 executives.

2009: Ranked No. 1 in RiskTech100 rankings

2010: SAS reports record revenues of $2.43 billion.