>>SAS is a really really so so expensive tool.
>
>I think in this country a lot of the big users are financial institutions and the government agencies - you know - the ones taxpayers had to bail out because they spent so much money on bad investments.. :(

From what I heard, almost any deacent SAS implementation cost no less then 1m euro.
Recently I heard one senior financial mgr talking about purchasing/implementing (no less) then SAS!. Knowing his turnover/volume of business, I thought at first that he must be eighter incredibly naive or stupid. (You gotta be really short on (b)Intelligence, in order to cash out for big lumber (BI tool) just so you can make couple of tootpicks )

Only later it crossed my mind that it could be me that is naive...{g} Perhaps it hurts much less when you are spending someone else's money.
I know that many IT mgrs that are taking their little 'racket' on almost any sizeable IT purchases (be that hardware or software), so I wander what blue envelopes must look like on 1m+ purchases. Huh, it takes a lot of muscle to write all those convincing viability/usability/ROI studies! Now, If wwhole company goes bankrupt couple of years down the line, they can blame it only on their own cheapness!!!
They should have spent much more on much bigger/better/latest/greatest BI ;)