Kens says that to a certain extent, SAS does regard the open-source community as a competitor it needs to keep up with. New techniques can be developed in open-source environments very quickly, while his company may need more time to study them before turning them into a marketable product feature.

"[It] takes a little bit longer for us to react to the technique and to test out all the different corners and permutations of the way you would use it. So, we might be a bit slower to respond.

However, he says SAS has the advantage of a large technical support segment and has the expertise to make certain techniques work for different organizations, whether retail businesses, banks, or healthcare institutions. SAS's strength lies in "the application of mathematics to particular domains," says Kent.

At the same time, he says, SAS keeps abreast of the trends and has opted to give its customers open-source options just the same. Kent says SAS has "built a bridge to R" just like it has with Hadoop. Whenever the open-source community comes up with a good idea, Kent says, SAS is paying attention.

"It's more useful in the long run to build a bridge or an interface to that idea than to try to pretend that it's not there."