WHITELIGHT BRINGS NEXT-GENERATION ANALYTICS TO THE DESKTOP

WhiteLight Systems, a leading provider of next-generation analytic applications, announced the release of Analyst Desktop and Analyst Desktop Premium, two single-user analytic software packages. Analyst Desktop and Analyst Desktop Premium feature WhiteLight's drag-and-drop modeling environment, which allows analysts to rapidly develop complex analytic models without programming.

"For years, WhiteLight has delivered analytic power and modeling flexibility to our enterprise customers," said Rich Ghiossi, vice president of Marketing at WhiteLight Systems. "Analyst Desktop and Analyst Desktop Premium will now deliver these benefits to individual users. In addition, we believe that Analyst Desktop will fill a major void in the analytics market, enabling businesses to effectively manage critical business decisions when spreadsheets have been stretched beyond their inherent capabilities and are no longer an efficient way to perform complex analyses."

Analyst Desktop

Analyst Desktop is the ideal alternative to spreadsheets for sophisticated business analysis. Analyst Desktop simplifies the construction and presentation of analyses through a rules-based modeling environment. Formulas are reused rather than duplicated endlessly, making computational flow easier to understand and facilitating transfer of models between users. Data access is greatly enhanced through automated linkage to data sources, eliminating the need for data extracts or tedious "cutting and pasting" of data. With Analyst Desktop, users spend less time preparing data for analysis and more time actually performing analysis.

Analyst Desktop employs the same analytic engine used by enterprise WhiteLight customers to answer questions such as: "If we roll out a new transfer-cost strategy next quarter, how will that impact my cash flow across our subsidiaries?" or "How will changes to my product line impact the profitability of different customer segments?" With Analyst Desktop, complex computations such as allocations, regressions, simulations and forecasts can be created once and reused with new data sets. Additionally, models developed in Analyst Desktop can be easily extended to multiple users, for departmental or enterprise-wide use.

Analyst Desktop Premium

As a single-user version of the WhiteLight Analytic Application Suite, Analyst Desktop Premium features a powerful application prototyping environment that enables companies to build and validate analytic applications before enterprise-wise deployment. Analyst Desktop Premium offers an ideal starting point for larger enterprises looking for an analytic platform that can be deployed to multiple users. The result is an economical, low-risk way to incrementally implement WhiteLight software and build internal support for a department-wide or enterprise-wide analytic solution.

Analyst Desktop Premium enables application prototyping through the addition of WhiteLight Application Objects (WAO) to the core desktop platform. WAO is a set of visualization components that simplify the creation of customized, Windows-style user interfaces which access an underlying analytic model. Using Analyst Desktop Premium, companies can test and substantiate the value of an analytic application before investing in enterprise-level software.

True Analytic Power for the Single User

Both Analyst Desktop and Analyst Desktop Premium permit true single-user interactive modeling without compromising analytic power or flexibility. Features such as automated SQL generation and drag-and-drop model development, as well as rules and dependency tracking, save time and allow individual business analysts to build sophisticated models without programming support.

"When it comes to data analysis, there has long been a chasm between spreadsheet tools and enterprise analytic applications, which meant that users had to trade off analytic power for flexibility," said Ghiossi. "With the introduction of these new desktop packages, WhiteLight bridges this gap and simplifies the analysis process, so that analysts spend less time wrestling with software and more time gaining insight that will improve their companies' bottom line."

About WhiteLight

Founded in 1992, WhiteLight Systems Inc is a privately held company based in Palo Alto, Calif., with regional headquarters in New York, Europe and Latin America. WhiteLight provides next-generation analytic applications that revolutionize a company's ability to make critical business decisions. With the WhiteLight Analytic Application Suite, companies can quickly create and deploy analytic applications that combine the modeling flexibility of spreadsheets with the data analysis of conventional business intelligence tools. WhiteLight's customers include Barclays, J.P. Morgan Chase, UUNET, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Lehman Brothers and Grupo Televisa. For more information about WhiteLight, visit www.whitelight.com.

Contact Miranda Tan of ExcitePR, 212-560-9500 x102, or mtan@excitepr.com, for Whitelight Systems Inc.