Faced with the difficult task of accessing and reporting on data in its SAP AG R/3 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in a timely fashion, the multi-billion dollar company deployed a combination of the SAS® Intelligent Warehousing Solution software running on an IBM RS/6000 S70 advanced server in just 3-1/2 days. 

According to Mike Morgan, Starwood IT Director, �We chose SAS as a data warehouse solution to be the data store for an ad hoc reporting tool.� 

�Differentiating one�s offering from the flood of ERP extraction and reporting tools isn�t easy,� said Doug Laney, senior program director in META Group�s Application Delivery Strategies. �Companies, like SAS, have done so by providing a template-based solution that can pull ERP data through to a reporting environment for rapid deployment, and subsequently into a persistent data store, like a data warehouse, for deeper analytics. 

Complemented by a strong metadata management offering, and data mining capabilities, these companies can take their customers end-to-end with little or no integration effort.� And the expected business value for Starwood" According to Bill Prentice, SAS Institute program manager for Data Warehousing, �The first iteration will give Starwood executives and their staff the opportunity to quickly understand how their organization is responding to operational issues, and to project and plan for future needs. Starwood�s IT group is also now better equipped to support its ERP and decision support environments. At the same time, Starwood benefits from SAS software�s ease of use, minimal maintenance, and flexibility/scalability. The SAS solution is running on the IBM RS/6000 providing reliable, fast and efficient business user access to Starwood�s diverse data sources; and placing relevant business information into the 1TB (and growing) data warehouse.�

�The RS/6000 S70 Advanced server is a powerful and scalable SMP system that optimizes Starwood�s financial reporting, while allowing their ERP system to do what it does best,� said Mike Kerr, vice-president of product marketing, IBM Web Server Division. �The outstanding performance of SAS software on the S70 Advanced provides hotel managers with greater insight into their businesses.�

As Starwood continues to grow, the need to rapidly deploy financial reporting applications grows as well. �Our future goal,� Morgan added �is to move as much of the financial reporting as possible (SAP, Hyperion, Excel, etc.) to SAS software.� According to Prentice, �Implementing the SAS software and IBM server removed contention between the operational needs of the ERP system and the decision support requirements of a data warehouse. This improved Starwood�s financial reporting capabilities, and allowed their ERP system to do its job - run the operations without contention from direct ad hoc access for decision support reporting. Combining SAS Intelligent Warehousing Solution with an ERP implementation reduces the high cost of ERP consulting, empowers the business staff to access their decision support information without needing high-cost ERP system programming services. As a bonus, IT staff no longer fields every ad-hoc reporting request, and can add more value by focusing on the operational system requirements.�

About IBM RS/6000 -- More than 1,000,000 IBM RS/6000 systems have been shipped to over 125,000 commercial and technical customers around the world. The RS/6000 family of computers feature IBM RISC-based microprocessors and run AIX, IBM�s UNIX operating system. RS/6000 delivers the industry�s most complete UNIX offerings by combining applications with hardware, software, service and support�a combination that yields new levels of high availability, scalability, system management, performance, and Deep Computing capabilities. Additional information: http://www.ibm.com/servers or http://www.rs6000.ibm.com .

About SAS Institute - SAS Institute, the world�s largest privately held software company, is the leader in decision support and data warehousing, providing integrated enterprise information-delivery and e-business solutions. Founded in 1976, the Institute markets packaged business solutions for vertical industry and departmental applications, as well as an integrated suite of software tools and consulting services. These allow companies to transform the wide variety of data within their organizations into information that business users and researchers need to make better decisions. SAS software and services are used at more than 33,000 business, government, and university sites in over 115 countries. SAS Institute�s 1999 revenues exceeded $1 billion.