The New York Times had an interesting piece yesterday about how SAS is facing several business threats from companies like the recently IBM-acquired SPSS, and from burgeoning interest in open-source software like R. The NYT ran an entire article about R earlier this year, and this article discusses how SAS has been revamping their technology to work seamlessly with R code in response to R's growing popularity in academia and other research labs.
NYT: At a Software Powerhouse, the Good Life Is Under Siege
NYT Slideshow: At SAS, Taking Care of Employees Is Good Business