IBM to Offer Monarch Report Mining Software to Complement its On Demand Document Management Solution
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Datawatch Corporation, a provider of business intelligence and knowledge management software, has announced that IBM will offer Monarch report mining software as a powerful enhancement to the company's OnDemand family of products. All Monarch sales and co-marketing efforts will be managed from IBM's e-Document Management Solutions headquarters, based in Greenville, SC. By using Monarch in conjunction with IBM's OnDemand document management, archiving and retrieval system, users will have a powerful tool for mining valuable information from reports that are stored as documents within an OnDemand installation.

Monarch lets users take report data files that are stored within the OnDemand COLD (Computer Output to Laser Disk) system and transform them into an easily understood, easily manipulated, spreadsheet-like format. This allows OnDemand users to mine archived report data for valuable nuggets of information. Monarch enables users to query and manipulate archived report data, freeing information from static ASCII or print report files and letting users easily create custom views of information. Some of the operations that can be easily performed with Monarch include graphing, charting, filtering, sorting and summarizing.

"OnDemand gives our customers fast, online access to the vast amounts of information stored in the COLD format," said Jeff Wharton, business unit executive for the OnDemand product group. "Monarch gives our OnDemand users the power to analyze this information once it has been retrieved. Together, OnDemand and Monarch add up to a formidable knowledge management and business information solution that is already benefiting our customers."

"IBM's powerful OnDemand product set is an ideal complement for a report mining tool like Monarch," added Marc Peterson, senior vice president for North American operations at Datawatch. "By combining Monarch and OnDemand, users get many of the same benefits they would get from data mining tools and data warehousing systems, but without the time or cost. And for Datawatch, the ability to team with IBM's unmatched sales and marketing field force gives us a tremendous leg up as we execute on our vision to move from technology company to marketing company."

According to Peterson, organizations are increasingly looking to data warehouses, data marts and data mining tools as a means of turning business data into competitive advantage. While offering powerful data analysis and access, these solutions can take years to set up and require highly skilled professionals to install and operate. The report mining capabilities offered by Monarch allow individuals, departments and even whole organizations to take advantage of many benefits of data mining tools and data warehousing systems without the time or cost.

OnDemand is a set of integrated software tools used to manage large volumes of computer-generated documents and information such as invoices, customer statements and management reports. Using a variety of technologies, including COLD, OnDemand electronically archives data that would have previously been stored on paper printouts or microfiche. Benefits enjoyed by users of OnDemand include increased efficiency, paper savings and reduced storage costs. OnDemand is available for the OS/390, AS/400, RS/6000 and NT platforms.

Datawatch Corporation markets two key software products -- Monarch and Q-Support. Datawatch's Monarch product is the industry-standard in report mining software and lets users turn hardcopy paper reports into living documents in which data can be analyzed, visualized and manipulated. More details on Datawatch and its products are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.datawatch.com