Altair Acquires World Programming to Advance Organizations' Digital Transformation

Acquisition enables customers to leverage the SAS language with modern languages like Python and open-source technologies to achieve best-in-class data analytics solutions

TROY, Mich., Dec. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair (Nasdaq: ALTR), the global leader converging simulation, HPC, and AI, today acquired World Programming, a UK-based technology company specializing in data analytics software used by many of the world's leading companies including financial services and insurance organizations. World Programming's platform supports development and execution of multi-language software solutions leveraging popular languages used in data science including Python, R, and the SAS language in a single program.

World Programming’s flagship product, WPS Analytics Workbench, offers coding and workflow capabilities.

"We are excited to integrate World Programming's exceptional team and technology into Altair and see this acquisition as a significant opportunity to help companies transition to hybrid architectures using modern, open technologies and languages while preserving, protecting, and leveraging the best elements of existing technology such as the SAS language," said James R. Scapa, founder and chief executive officer of Altair. "We believe World Programming's solutions are highly advanced and proven to help customers compile and execute millions of models built using the SAS language while embracing modern languages and open-source technologies, allowing them to respond faster to market demands and gain new insights."

World Programming brings a customer base of approximately 500 enterprise customers worldwide. As organizations increasingly seek open-source solutions to accelerate their big data initiatives and embrace a more modern and flexible environment, the acquisition of World Programming will strengthen Altair's foothold in several industries including financial services, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, asset management, telecommunications, retail, energy, and consumer products.

The acquisition includes World Programming's flagship product, WPS Analytics, which is backed by more than two decades of experience and developed to meet the increasing use of open-source languages. WPS Analytics is a powerful and versatile software platform for scalable data manipulation and analytics, with several notable features including: 

• Ability to run programs written in SAS language syntax without the need to install any third-party products 
• Fully integrated SAS language support 
• Support for SQL, Python, R, and Hadoop and for exchanging data, all inside a single program
• Advanced math, statistics, and machine learning algorithms
• Ability to access multiple data sources including big data, cloud, and mainframe 
• Ability to use standalone or with enterprise management facilities including data access control and model deployment to on-demand APIs 
• Flexible deployment to link on-premises, mainframe, and cloud environments 

"Customers want choice and integrating with Altair – an organization with a trusted and reliable open-architecture philosophy – will give users easy access to technologies in a flexible and intuitive environment," said Oliver Robinson, chief executive officer, World Programming. "Altair will help to accelerate access to our solutions as we converge the modern world of best-in-class open-source technologies with the ability to support decades of investment in the SAS language."

World Programming's software will be integrated into Altair's data analytics solutions suite and available via Altair Units, which gives customers easy access to Altair's entire portfolio of software solutions.

About Altair (Nasdaq: ALTR)
Altair is a global technology company providing software and cloud solutions in the areas of simulation, high-performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence (AI). Altair enables organizations across broad industry segments to compete more effectively in a connected world while creating a more sustainable future. To learn more, please visit www.altair.com.

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