CHAPTER 4 Counting on Statistical Software 55

perform many statistical functions, technical support from the software com-

pany, and the expectation that the software will remain in use in the future as the

company continues to support and upgrade it.

However, organizations today are hesitant to adopt commercial software when

they can instead use open-source software like R or Python. Admittedly, even

though it is free of charge, there are many downsides to open-source software.

First, you need to hire analysts who know how to use it so well that they can figure

out what to do when there’s a problem because open-source software does not

have tech support. Next, you need to hire a lot more analysts than you would with

commercial software because a lot of their work will be in trying to customize the

software for your use and keep it updated so that your organization runs smoothly.

So, why are new organizations today hesitant to adopt commercial software when

open-source software has so many downsides? The main reason is that the

old advantages of commercial software are not as true anymore. SAS and SPSS

are expensive programs, but they have much of the same functionality as open-

source R and Python, which are free. In some cases, analysts prefer the

open-source application to the commercial application because they can custom-

ize it more easily to their setting. Also, it is not clear that commercial software is

innovating ahead of open-source software. Organizations do not want to get

entangled with expensive commercial software that eventually starts to perform

worse than free open-source alternatives!

As a result, many organizations use both commercial and open-source statistical

software in integrated application pipelines. Therefore, it is important to be com-

fortable evaluating and using various commercial software, even if open-source

options are becoming more popular.

Checking Out Commercial Software

In the following sections, we discuss the most popular commercial statistical

software available currently.

SAS

SAS is the oldest commercial software currently available. It started out as having

two main components — Base SAS and SAS Stat — that provided the most used

statistical calculations. However, today, it has grown to include many additional

components and sublanguages. SAS has always been so expensive that only orga-

nizations with a significant budget can afford to purchase and use it. However,