Financial Watch:

Draeger Medical Selects MIS AG North America for BI

MIS AG North America, a leading provider of business intelligence solutions, announced that Draeger Medical Inc, a provider of integrated medical systems and services for effective and cost-efficient patient care, has selected MIS AG's DecisionWare suite of business intelligence solutions.

MIS AG's DecisionWare is an integrated suite of solutions for budgeting, reporting, consolidation and analysis. By using a Collaborative Analytical Processing (CAP) approach, MIS AG's solutions allows organizations to support the business processes enabling decisions by creating a hub for exchanging information, insight and ideas. MIS DecisionWare enables companies to increase cost efficiency, leverage information and knowledge, exploit rising opportunities, and execute decision more timely and effectively. Over 18,000 decision-makers at leading companies worldwide such as Hewlett Packard, Bayer, and Fuji use MIS DecisionWare.

Draeger Medical, a subsidiary of Draegerwerk AG, offers a comprehensive line of anesthesia, critical care, architectural and information systems for today's hospital's needs. The Telford, Penn. based company has developed several customer-oriented innovations, such as the first anesthesia device with automatic patient ventilation. Prior to selecting MIS AG's DecisionWare, Draeger Medical used a labor-intensive spreadsheet driven system, in addition to Lotus Notes, for financial planning. Draeger Medical also tried an out-of-the-box solution, which did not meet its needs. The company wanted a better solution. Now, seventy-five Draeger Medical employees will use MIS DecisionWare to control, consolidate, and manage the company's budgeting and reporting processes.

"With MIS DecisionWare, we now have a tool that will let us more effectively manage our budgeting and reporting," said Ken Hagner, Draeger Medical's controller. "Draeger Medical had several requirements for a business intelligence solution, such as the ability to report into corporate. We also needed seamless integration with SAP R/3. MIS DecisionWare was the only solution that met all of our requirements," added Hagner, "MIS DecisionWare will enable us to easily validate information and, because it is Web-based, it will facilitate collaboration."

"MIS AG's DecisionWare is a powerful suite of business intelligence solutions," said Michael Ferreri, the Microsoft Corp. Greater Pennsylvania District general manager. "We worked with MIS because MIS DecisionWare enables companies to fully utilize their investment in Microsoft." Added Ferreri, "MIS AG's tremendous reception at Microsoft's Fusion 2001 is indicative of the company's commitment to Microsoft customers like Draeger Medical."

"We are very pleased that Draeger Medical chose MIS DecisionWare," said Anthony (Tony) Politano, chief executive officer of MIS AG North America. "Many leading companies, like Draeger, depend on MIS AG's business intelligence solutions. MIS AG provides these companies with a flexible and comprehensive suite of tools that can integrate with their existing systems." Added James (Jim) McCarthy, vice president of business development at MIS AG North America, "MIS DecisionWare provides Draeger with a framework for growth and enables the company to extend its existing investment in Microsoft and SAP R/3." For more information about MIS AG North America, please visit www.misag-usa.com or call 973-679-0724.

Contact Jeanne Achille, The Devon Group, 732-542-2000 x11, jeanne@devonpr.com.

German City Council Implements DataCore's SANsymphony

DataCore Software, a leading supplier of storage networking and virtualization software, announced that its SANsymphony has been implemented as part of the cutting-edge storage solution for the city of Heidelberg, Germany.

DataCore's reseller partner in Germany, CEMA AG, specialists in IT, ASP and network solutions, has implemented a Storage Area Network (SAN) for the City Council and is using DataCore's virtualization technology, which facilitates central storage management and high availability for the SAN.

"By deciding on installing a SAN together with the installation of an additional data center, we are investing in an infrastructure to meet the demands for growing quantities of data and increased security requirements in the municipal administration," commented Manfred Leutz of Heidelberg City Council. "As our heterogeneous IT architecture has different operating systems and platforms, SANsymphony is without doubt the ideal solution to give us central management functionality, high availability, synchronous mirroring between the data centers, secure back- up and rapid recovery in the event of downtime."

The city of Heidelberg has 140,000 inhabitants with two computing centers hosting servers running Novell, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Linux operating systems. As a comprehensive storage management solution, SANsymphony allows the flexible allocation of virtual storage capacities, regardless of storage vendor or server platform. The software offers extensive redundancy and high availability functions, which are important for the city's constantly growing data demands.

"Our customers are increasingly focusing on open solutions, which can not only cope with present IT challenges but also guarantee a secure, effective and scalable storage architecture for the future," said Tobias Wellhausen, vice president of sales at CEMA AG. "Therefore we are pleased that, with DataCore as a partner, we can offer a comprehensive virtualization and management platform -- completely independent of hardware -- for SANs. SANsymphony also adds significant value to Heidelberg's SAN."

Heidelberg City Council uses two storage domain servers for the SANsymphony software delivering optimal redundancy. "Powered by DataCore" solutions support rapid disaster recovery as well as server- and LAN-free back-up through numerous functions including snapshots, failover, mirroring, alternate pathing or asynchronous data replication via LAN and WAN networks.

"SANsymphony is a highly scalable and extremely flexible virtualization solution that is used in large- and medium-sized businesses, in industry and in administration," said Manfred Gramlich, regional sales director for DataCore in Germany. "With our partner CEMA, we have been able to offer the City of Heidelberg a solution that simplifies storage administration, reduces operating costs and also guarantees economic advantages in the future."

About CEMA AG

CEMA AG is a specialist in IT and network solutions as well as ASP and is based in Mannheim, Frankfurt a. M. and Berlin. Since it was founded in 1990 it has been working in consultation, conception and implementation and in the operation of IT projects and services, with the emphasis on innovation, practice orientation and economic viability. Since 2000 CEMA AG has been operating its own ASP center in an external Internet computing center. The central target groups are software manufacturers and businesses which make software available for users. The CEMA service and support concept extends from a 24x7 help desk and individual training to complete IT outsourcing. As a partner with numerous certifications and authorizations from the most important manufacturers, CEMA has direct access to support and specialist knowledge.

About DataCore

DataCore Software Corporation is a leader in storage virtualization and networking software. The company's award-winning SANsymphony storage control software dramatically improves ROI and storage utilization by converting "islands" of disparate storage into networked storage pools, enabling the easy allocation of storage capacity. DataCore distributes its software products through the SANvantage Partner Program including its authorized and technical channel and major OEM partners worldwide. Founded in 1998 by some of the industry's most respected storage technologists, DataCore is privately-held with headquarters in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and other US offices located in NY, CA, IL, and NC with international sales and service operations located in London, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, and Sydney. The company is a voting member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and an active member of the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA). For more information visit www.datacore.com.

Contact United States, Jan Jahosky, 407-331-4699, jan.jahosky@datacore.com.

KXEN Partners with The Ariane Group

KXEN, a global analytic software company that provides powerful, predictive and descriptive data modeling technology for both data mining professionals and business decision-makers, announced it has signed an agreement with The Ariane Group, a European integration and consulting services organization, to distribute and implement its groundbreaking data modeling product -- KXEN Analytic Framework.

Ariane Group will employ its specialist data management, data warehousing, and data mining knowledge in markets such as financial services, insurance, and pharmaceuticals to offer a complete data analysis solution. Organizations will be able to quickly analyze extremely large and complicated data sets, improve customer relationships by profiling and predicting behavior, and help customers interested in Business Intelligence (BI) solutions get the edge on their competition.

KXEN Analytic Framework employs powerful predictive and descriptive modeling technology, but can be used directly by customer- and business-focused staff in their daily work, allowing them to quickly make informed decisions based on existing data. Traditional data modeling solutions require the user to have a high degree of technical knowledge and trained analysts will generally process and model data before relaying the results through to marketing, sales, and customer-facing employees. KXEN Components allow analysts to concentrate on other higher level activities.

Unlike competitive products, KXEN Analytic Framework uses a revolutionary mathematical theory to build accurate data models in minutes rather than hours or days. Users can add as many new attributes as needed to make accurate predictions without slowing the business cycle and enabling project and customer deadlines to be met. In addition, the same mathematical theory ensures that the model will reliably indicate to the user the performance that can be expected when applied to new data.

Daniel Coon, business development manager at Ariane Group commented: "Ariane's implementation and integration of KXENÕs software will help our customers tackle the ever increasing challenges in the analysis and extraction of relevant knowledge from increasingly large data sets. We see this as the most powerful technology for predictive data modeling on the market today and a strong complement to other market-leading BI technologies."

"The KXEN solution allows businesses to build accurate models quickly without consuming valuable technical expertise more productively used elsewhere," continued Coon. "Our consultants, who specialize in business intelligence, are fully competent in KXEN's solutions and we are eager to propose the KXEN solution to our customers, especially those with particularly difficult data analysis challenges or those just looking for that competitive edge."

Ariane Group's range of services includes: organization and change management (Balanced Scorecard); systems integration; project management; and expertise and consulting in the design, development, and maintenance of IT projects and network development. Its expertise has evolved with the changes and developments in the IT sector for information systems, network systems, and associated services.

Roger Haddad, CEO of KXEN, said: "Ariane Group's data mining expertise across a range of our target sectors was a key factor behind this partnership. With KXEN Analytic Framework, Ariane Groups's consultants can offer their customers a complete data modeling solution that allows organizations to both anticipate the behavior of existing customers and accurately identify potential customers."

About Ariane Group

Ariane Group is a European computer engineering services company organized in the major linguistic and economic territories: Northern Belgium/Southern Belgium/Luxembourg/Northern France/Southern France and Ile de France. Its business of consultancy, audits, engineering and system integration is enriched by the setting up of centers of expertise: Method, Data warehouse, Client/Server, Intranet/Internet Groupware, Systems/Networks/ Telecoms, ERP, and Advanced Technologies.

About KXEN

KXEN (Knowledge eXtraction ENgines) is a global analytic software company that provides powerful modeling technology for both data mining professionals and business decision-makers. KXEN's patented technology quickly and easily transforms data into knowledge, enabling users to make better business decisions. KXEN partners with systems integrators and original equipment manufacturers to integrate its analytic software into their applications. KXEN offers a state-of-the-art suite of predictive and descriptive engines based upon Vapnik's theory of mathematics for scoring, classification, clustering, and variables contribution. KXEN is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with Research & Development facilities in Paris, France, and additional offices throughout the U.S. and Europe. For more information on KXEN, visit www.kxen.com.

Contact Karen Higgins, TMP Worldwide for KXEN, 610-251-6880, karen.higgins@tmp.com.