Continuing to expand beyond its data-analysis roots, SAS Institute Inc. has agreed to acquire Intrinsic, a British developer of marketing automation and campaign-management software. SAS will use the acquisition to extend its product line into the operational customer-relationship management space and compete head-to-head with companies such as E.piphany, MicroStrategy, and NetPerceptions. The cost of the acquisition was not disclosed.

SAS and Intrinsic already had a product-development relationship, and last year SAS acquired a $6 million stake in the British company. But Randy Guard, solutions strategy director for SAS, says acquiring Intrinsic outright would bring that company's entire product line, sales force, research and development staff, and customers into the SAS fold. "With a partnership, there's a limit to what you can achieve," Guard says.

Combining SAS's data-management and analysis tools with the Intrinsic marketing automation technology would provide SAS customers with a modular set of tools for planning and executing marketing campaigns, analyzing the results, and acting on the findings. Marketing managers today are increasingly demanding that analytical and operational CRM software work in concert.

Buying Intrinsic and folding its applications into the SAS product line "signals SAS's entrance into the [CRM] transaction space, which is a very new place for them," says Jacqueline Sweeney-Coolidge, warehousing and business-intelligence senior analyst at the Hurwitz Group. "The Intrinsic acquisition has enough importance to actually change the landscape of the customer-relationship management market."