IBM plans to create a consulting practice within its IBM Global Services organization that specializes in SAS software. The practice will license a wide range of SAS products, including analytical applications for customer- and supplier-relationship management and data warehousing software used to analyze information from enterprise resource management applications.

The companies will develop tighter links between IBM's DB2 database and SAS's software to speed the transfer of data files, and their data-modeling tools will be better integrated. The projects will take up to 18 months.

The deal is unusual because it includes SAS products that compete with IBM's business-intelligence software. But SAS has 1,900 customers running its software on DB2, and the companies can expand on that base, says Marianna Suciu, SAS's VP of U.S. commercial sales. Executives wouldn't disclose revenue estimates for the deal, but it could generate business in "the high tens of millions" of dollars, says Ben Barnes, IBM's general manager of global business-intelligence solutions.

Fingerhut Companies Inc. in Minnetonka, Minn., uses statistical-analysis tools from SAS to mine its customer database. It runs a separate data warehouse on DB2 for decision-support tasks. Later this year, says Fingerhut business-intelligence director Randy Erdahl, the company plans to combine the systems--a process that will be eased by the IBM-SAS product integration.