CARY – SAS continues an incredible winning streak when it comes to revenue, improving sales in 2017 to a record $3.24 billion as the privately held software giant continues its stretch of annual dollar growth dating back to 1976. And SAS continues to recruit new workers both in Cary as well as around the world.

Emerging technologies, such as Internet of Things which jumped 60 percent, drove SAS’ 42nd straight year of growth.

SAS also continues to add jobs, although growth was slight. Headcount climbed to 14,116, up 38 overall worldwide with virtually all the additions coming locally. In Cary, jobs grew to 5,631, up 37.

However, Chief Marketing Officer Randy Guard says there are numerous jobs available.

“When the rest of the market was down we hired to invest in focus areas. In the last couple of years we’ve grown modestly,” Guard told WRAL TechWire.

“We are continuing to hire in critical areas, and we currently have more than 470 open positions worldwide, with about 175 of those in Cary.”

SAS also is launching a new group that will focus on IOT, says Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer Oliver Schabenberger,

In its annual recap of company finances disclosed Wednesday, SAS noted that revenues increase 1.25 percent year-over-year with the Americas markets providing nearly half of sales followed by Europe-Middle east-Africa at 36.5 percent and Asia-Pacific at 14.5 percent.

Changing landscape

“The analytics landscape is rapidly changing as organizations find new value in how they use data to gain insights,” said SAS CEO and co-founder Jim Goodnight in announcing the financials. “We are helping our customers be more competitive with disruptive technologies such as analytics for the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. Successfully innovating new technology and ways to help our customers is why we continue to be the company people turn to for unrivaled analytics expertise and business solutions.”

In addition to IoT, SAS reported big jumps in revenue for risk management solutions (35 percent) and cloud computing-related services (15 percent).

Fraud detection and government data management also achieved double-digit growth, the company added.

As technology continues to evolve rapidly with IoT, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other developments, SAS said it invested 26 percent of revenues in research-and-development, an area in which the company typically outspends competitors by big margins.

The company also noted that research firm IDC says SAS holds a 30.5 percent share of the analytics market, one it has led since IDC began tracking data in the field in 1997. SAS noted that IDC statistics show SAS has double the share of any other provider in that space.

Overall in the big data space, the 2017 IDC report citing statistics for 2016 ranked SAS fifth behind Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and IBM.