Lynx Express Chooses Sand's Nucleus

Sand Technology Inc announced that Nucleus, Sand's award winning set of data warehousing tools, has been chosen by Lynx Express, the International parcel distributor, to provide integrated business intelligence across its various divisions.

Lynx Express has completed a Proof of Value program with Nucleus, which addressed specific analysis queries. In the pilot scheme, the solution has performed cross-customer and -company business reporting, holding six months of detailed transaction data online.

"The new system will be used across all Lynx Express's business functions, including sales, commercial, finance and operations so that authorized employees will have access to detailed information in their division," comments Lindsey Allen, Business Systems Manager at Lynx Express. "It will enable employees to extract and evaluate important data from the source systems, facilitating reporting on up to two years of detailed transaction data online.

"We were looking for a solution to rapidly bring the varied source systems together, and with Nucleus, we will be able to interrogate across all these groups and analyze the data accordingly," continues Lindsay Allen. "The Proof of Value program has demonstrated the value of the system and has provided a clear pay-back model for us. In addition the ease of deployment has been remarkable."

"We were impressed by both the speed and flexibility of the product in the Proof of Value program and are looking forward to deriving added value for our business," says Steve Dennison, Commercial Director of Lynx Express. "There is a distinct cost advantage for a company of our size."

Nucleus allows fast and simple data acquisition, assimilation, and validation. It allows data warehouse development to be completed within days, instead of the typical months or even years, and requires up to 70 per cent less manpower to complete a typical implementation. Further, using Nucleus, end users have access to the data throughout the process to allow the proposed reporting suite to be structured and refined from day one.

Nucleus can also be deployed as a powerful analytical processing tool for end users of existing data marts and warehouses. The product addresses the need to perform iterative, ad hoc, forensic queries of data, involving drill down often not envisioned during an original design of the data warehouse/mart. The patented data storage techniques of Nucleus allow any question to be asked and answered in seconds or minutes instead of hours or days.

Nucleus is optimized for Active Warehousing where 24 x 7 access is required to systems that are constantly being updated. Standard Web browser technology allows access to a single, integrated source of information for employees, customers, distributors, suppliers, and the public via Internet, intranet, or extranet connectivity. Users with the appropriate security clearance are able to drill down from summary to detailed data with the 100% indexed Nucleus database providing extremely high scalability for volumes of data and numbers of concurrent users.

Nucleus, which is available for both 64-bit Unix and 32-bit Windows NT and 95/98 platforms, has already picked up a succession of prestigious awards in North America and was voted the 1998 World Class Solution, Database Engine of the Year for data warehousing and data mart and the 1999 Data Warehouse Top 100 by DM Review, North America's leading business intelligence and data warehousing magazine.

About Lynx Express

Rapid expansion since a successful management buy-out in 1997 has subsequently positioned LYNX as the UK's largest independent parcel carrier. The company is now recognized as one of the leading carriers in the UK. More recently, the strategic acquisition of Red Star in January 1999 strengthened its position even further in the lightweight marketplace creating a multimodal road, rail and air service capability unmatched by any other carrier. Currently LYNX Express employs 3,200 people and operates a fleet of more than 1500 vehicles. Red Star brought an additional headcount of 550 employees to the enlarged new company.

About Sand Technology

Sand Technology Inc provides high performance, scalable software solutions for data mining, data marts, data warehouses and online analytical processing (OLAP). Sand's Nucleus product suite brings patented technology to the business user allowing for more timely and accurate decision processing within the disconnected client, desktop, workgroup, departmental and enterprise computing environments. Supporting industries like retail, finance, healthcare, transportation, telecommunication, manufacturing, government and insurance, Nucleus is used for corporate initiatives such as customer relationship management, risk analysis and management, product trend and profitability analysis, fraud detection, emerging markets, competitive analysis and quality control. Sand has commercial relationships with IBM, Oracle, Compaq Computer Corporation, Microsoft, SAIC, GE, Brio Technology, Information Builders Inc, and Wyle Systems. Sand Technology can be reached on the World Wide Web at www.sandtechnology.com.

Contact vice president, Finance and Administration of Sand Technology Inc, 514-939-3477