Keith Collins

Keith Collins, senior vice president and chief technology officer at SAS, promotes corporate technology strategy and supports the efforts of the 1,800-person global research and development, customer support and corporate information systems divisions to achieve that vision. With a primary focus on customer- and partner-facing activities, Collins fosters close working relationships with marketing and other customer-facing divisions to ensure that SAS technologies are aligned with customer needs and market demand.

Collins led the effort to develop SAS®9, the company's breakthrough platform that is literally redefining business intelligence as it is known today. He is instrumental in developing SAS' industry-specific solutions that deliver the benefits of powerful analytic technologies into the hands of non-technical users.

Collins fosters an innovation-driven R&D culture, harvesting ideas from unexpected sources. He encourages development teams to build lasting relationships with customers that not only solve the customers' problems but also create new marketplace solutions.

Collins joined SAS in 1984 as a R&D liaison for the Technical Support division then became manager of a host development group for several years. While heading up the company's VM/CMS development, he told SAS founder and CEO Dr. Jim Goodnight that product launches could run better.
That suggestion led to his appointment as the company's first research and development strategist responsible for product coordination and planning.
Soon after, he managed the Research and Development Data Warehousing initiatives, a position he held until being named vice president of research and development in 1997.

As vice president of R&D, Collins set the stage for a series of major architectural shifts leading toward the vision of SAS®9. First, he integrated 10 independent R&D divisions into a single corporate entity then he established the architectural and infrastructural frameworks for building on that vision. Perhaps more importantly, he established close working relationships with marketing and other customer-facing divisions to ensure that the technologies being developed at SAS were in sync with customer needs and market demand.

A graduate of North Carolina State University with a bachelor's degree in computer science, Collins is a devoted supporter of the university. He helped establish the university's Center for Knowledge Discovery, coordinated the funding of the SAS Distinguished Professor of Computer Science chair, and recruited a top faculty member from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to fill the position. He is also the chair and founding member of the strategic advisory board of the department of computer science. In 2003 the university named him a Distinguished Engineering Alumnus.