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Trail Blazer: Our High-Tech Company of the Year pioneered an industry in North Carolina. A quarter-century later, it still leads the way. (Cover Story).

Article Excerpt
With both hands on the arms of the purple armchair in the corner of his office, Jim Goodnight winces as he pushes his 6-foot-5-inch frame erect. "I'm not getting old," he tells a visitor. "I broke my collarbone skiing a week ago." It happened in Steamboat Springs, Colo., where Goodnight -- president, founder and majority owner of Cary-based SAS Institute Inc. -- has a home. "I pointed my skis straight downhill and got going a little too fast. Went down hard."

Even at 59 and with a fortune estimated at $8 billion, Goodnight isn't slowing down. Whether skiing or leading the company he started in 1976 -- the world's largest privately held software maker -- he keeps barreling down double-black-diamond slopes. "Right now, I'm shifting my emphasis to sales in North America. I gave a keynote address this morning, and I'm doing an average of one talk a week out on the road somewhere to some conference. I had dinner last night with three different customers and met several more today."

SAS makes software for collecting and analyzing massive amounts of statistical data. But it gets attention in the mainstream media not for its products but for its generous employee benefits -- in January, Fortune named it the third-best place to work in the country -- and for its founder's wealth and his on-again, off-again flirtation with taking his company public.

The hoopla often obscures what's most impressive about SAS: It's by far the state's biggest and most successful homegrown high-tech company. That's why four judges picked it as High-Tech Company of the Year, presented by BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA and KPMG LLP. It chalked up $1.1 billion in sales in fiscal 2000 and its 24th consecutive year of profits. It has 8,500 employees around the globe, including 4,500 in Cary. Ninety percent of Fortune 500 companies use its software.

"SAS invented the software market in North Carolina," says Rollie Tillman, one of the judges and director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology Venturing at UNC Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School. "And it epitomizes all the things we expect of entrepreneurial companies -- strong revenue growth, job creation, profitability, corporate citizenship."

The other judges echo his comments. Jim Nichols, the N.C. Commerce Department's director of electronics and information-technology development, says SAS "set new standards for its treatment of employees." Dave Norbury, president of Greensboro-based RF Micro Devices -- last year's winner -- says his company uses SAS software because "it's the state of the art."

"SAS is not only a pioneer -- the Daniel Boone of Tar Heel high-tech -- but a company that continues to blaze trails," adds the fourth judge, David Kinney, BNC's editor-in-chief and publisher. "It's also an outfit that, as this last year has proven, keeps moving ahead even when the going gets tough."

They selected SAS from the annual ranking of high-tech companies that KPMG compiles for the competition based on quantitative measures. "It's been a difficult year for technology companies," says Brad Hurrell, the partner in charge of the list, "but technology is and continues to be a leading industry in the future of our state." Even mighty SAS was hurt by the economic downturn: The final figure wasn't available in early January, but Goodnight said 2001 was the first year that sales didn't grow by double digits. Still, they did rise.

"Jim's always been a great businessman because he stresses the simple stuff," says Barrett Joyner, a former president of SAS North America and now CEO of FullSeven Technologies in Research Triangle Park. "Spend your money wisely. Listen to the customers. It's not really sexy. But a lot of the sexy companies are no longer in business."

It's early January, and eight inches of snow have shut down SAS. No kids play in the daycare center. The staff pianist isn't serenading employees in the cafeteria. The clinic is closed. The front gates of the tree-lined campus are locked; a visitor needs special permission to enter. But in Building R --...

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