SAS appoints Casey McGee as VP and Chief Sales Officer

SAS has appointed Casey McGee as Executive Vice President and Chief Sales Officer. He joins the software company after senior roles at Google, Microsoft and Lytx.

McGee will lead SAS's global sales organisation as it reshapes its commercial leadership following the retirement of long-serving sales executive Riad Gydien. The appointment followed a global search for the company's next sales leader.

He brings 25 years of experience in enterprise sales and revenue leadership. Most recently, McGee was Managing Director, Global Partner Ecosystem and Applied AI at Google, where he focused on revenue and consumption across business application and infrastructure partners.

Before Google, he spent 22 years at Microsoft in a range of sales, partner and global operations roles. He later became Chief Revenue Officer at Lytx, overseeing marketing, sales, partner and customer success.

The appointment comes as software groups seek senior executives with experience in both traditional enterprise sales and AI-related commercial models. McGee's background includes customer growth, partner ecosystems and industry-led go-to-market structures.

At Microsoft, his responsibilities included sales leadership across global independent software vendors, digital natives, venture capital, private equity, systems integrators and strategic partner ecosystems. He also helped create Microsoft's Digital Natives customer segment and led business operations for its Global Sales and Marketing organisation.

Jim Goodnight, Chief Executive Officer of SAS, linked the appointment to the company's long-standing customer approach.

"Casey understands enterprise software, applied AI and partner ecosystems. More importantly, he understands how to help customers get value from technology. SAS has always grown by helping organisations solve real problems with data. Casey's experience will help us keep doing that as customers look for practical, trusted ways to use data and AI," Goodnight said.

SAS, which built its business around analytics software, is positioning trust and practical use cases as central themes in its pitch to customers adopting AI tools. McGee echoed that emphasis.

"There's no shortage of companies promising AI transformation. But in this market, trust is becoming the real differentiator. Customers don't just need access to models; they need confidence that the data, decisions and outcomes behind them are reliable, responsible and connected to the way their industries actually work. SAS has spent 50 years earning that trust with companies and governments around the world. That foundation is more valuable than ever as AI moves from experimentation to execution, and I'm excited to work with SAS customers, partners and teams to turn it into the next phase of growth," McGee said.

McGee takes over at a point of transition for the sales function. Gydien, his predecessor, spent 20 years at SAS and helped lead the global sales organisation through a period of growth and changes to its go-to-market structure.

According to SAS, Gydien helped strengthen customer focus and push a more unified global commercial strategy during his tenure. McGee now takes on responsibility for maintaining sales momentum while adapting the organisation to changing demand for data and AI products.

For SAS, the hire also underlines the growing importance of partnerships in enterprise software sales. McGee's recent roles at Google and earlier leadership work at Microsoft centred heavily on partner channels and ecosystems, which have become a larger part of how major software companies reach customers and package AI-related services.

His appointment places an executive with experience across direct sales, alliances and customer success at the head of SAS's sales organisation.