SPSS ANNOUNCES AGGRESSIVE CLEMENTINE DEVELOPMENT PLANS; NEW OWNERS TO ADD SCALABILITY, DEPLOYMENT AND STATISTICS

Many people have been thinking: Now that SPSS Inc. owns the Clementine product, what are they going to do with it? SPSS has announced development plans that are expected to keep Clementine, the flagship data mining product of recently acquired Integral Solutions Ltd., at the forefront of the data mining market. Upcoming releases in the Clementine product line will add the ability to work effectively with larger databases in a client/server environment; the ability to export models that include related data management functions as well as calculations and predictions; and additions to the statistical capabilities of Clementine via both the addition of algorithms and tighter integration with SPSS.

"Clementine plays a key role in our future plans," said SPSS President and CEO Jack Noonan. "We see Clementine as a rapid analysis environment - a 'workbench' for people to create models that deliver on the promise of data mining. With these plans, we expect Clementine's unique and highly visual user interface and underlying architecture will become an interactive front-end to an increasingly rich set of analytical methods. In addition, improvements to scalability mean that customers will be able to work even more effectively with the very large data volumes in today's data warehouses. Lastly we plan to provide both enhanced and new deployment vehicles which will give users greater ability to deploy the models they develop to transform their organizations."

SPSS' development plans are a combination of existing plans and new possibilities afforded by the December 1998 acquisition. Prior to the acquisition, SPSS and Integral Solutions had a strategic alliance relationship, under which the companies developed initial integration of Clementine and SPSS. According to Louise Rehling, SPSS' executive vice president of product development, "This acquisition gives us significantly more potential for deep integration and sharing of components between Clementine and other SPSS products. We think this will have many positive implications for anyone who does data mining."

Highlights of the development plans include delivery of:

• A product that exports customer-created Clementine "streams" of analysis which can then be applied to new data or embedded into other applications. With this product, customers will be able to reap the full benefit of the Clementine models - collections of a variety of "nodes" (where a node can be, for example, a data access activity, a data transformation activity, or a data mining method) - which represent complete solutions for various applications such as scoring a loan applicant, finding the best set of customers to mail to and predicting future sales. Expected delivery: First quarter 1999
• A Clementine-based client/server product. This product will enable people to work more effectively with larger databases - and thereby use Clementine to tackle more types of problems. Expected delivery: mid-1999
• A new release of Clementine. This release will feature significant integration with the SPSS line. It is expected to add more analytical and presentation capabilities to Clementine, as well as additional data access and deployment options. Expected delivery: late 1999
• A set of deployment products for both SPSS analysis and Clementine streams which enables distribution of information and models which allows many in an organization to perform scoring and what-if type analysis. Expected delivery: late 1999
• Delivery of another new release of Clementine. This release will bring the Clementine and SPSS client/server models together, enabling tighter integration in a host of ways. Expected delivery: Year 2000

More information about each of the products above will be made available over time. "In order to be fair to our customers, we need to dig into the details of each project before we can be more specific about release dates and the features we'll be able to deliver in each product," said Rehling.

Clementine was recently presented with the "Best of Data Mining Product of 1998" award by Data Warehousing Tools Bulletin. In 1998, both SPSS and ISL were named among the top 100 most influential data warehouse/business intelligence vendors by DM Review magazine. SPSS was ranked No. 28 and ISL No. 48 in the Data Warehouse Top 100, a comprehensive market study in which DM Review readers rate the vendors of data warehouse/business intelligence products used in their organizations.

Company information

SPSS Inc. is a leader in the large markets for analytical solutions: business intelligence (data mining and market research), quality improvement and scientific research. SPSS products and services transform organizations by helping users leverage information to grow revenues and improve processes. Today, more than 2 million people use SPSS, the world's best-selling software for desktop analysis, to create and distribute information for better decision making.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 1998, SPSS is one of the most enduring software companies in the world. SPSS has won the following awards: named No. 28 in DM Review's Data Warehouse Top 100; placed No. 21 on the 1998 Softletter 100, a ranking of the top 100 personal computer software companies in the United States; and No. 87 in the 1998 Software 500, a ranking of the world's largest software vendors by Software Magazine. Headquartered in Chicago, SPSS has offices and distributors around the world. For more information, visit http://www.spss.com.