Visual Numerics Targets Business Intelligence Market With JWAVE

Visual Numerics, Inc., a developer of data visualization, numerical analysis, and Internet software solutions, unveiled a new release of its JWAVE product targeting the business intelligence (BI) market. JWAVE is the company's server-based data analysis and visualization environment that lets users develop applications to view BI data.

HBS International, Inc. (HBSI) selected JWAVE as the data analysis engine of its internally-developed BI system, which it sells to hospitals and other health care facilities worldwide.

"We found that JWAVE lets us extend the analysis capabilities of our current OLAP (online analytical processing) tools," said Kathleen Marzahl, HBSI's Vice President of Development, "JWAVE offers unique views and understanding of our data, giving us a clear, competitive advantage in the marketplace. Furthermore, JWAVE's flexible framework and robust feature set allowed us to build our product within 30 days."

"Visual Numerics has a well-established history of providing data analysis and advanced visualization tools to people who need to turn raw data into meaningful information," said Don Kainer, Visual Numerics' Vice President of Marketing and Technology.

"These same demands are prevalent in the business intelligence market," Kainer continued, "Historically, the decision support component of a BI solution is based on the analysis of tabular data. Based on our experience in other markets, we concluded that there was a real opportunity to change the decision support paradigm. Instead of studying rows and columns of numbers looking for patterns, trends, and anomalies, users can apply JWAVE's powerful visualization and analytical techniques to drill into the data. The resulting graphical output, which may include mapping and multi-dimensional views, improves the decision-making process by making it faster, easier, and more accurate."

JWAVE is an enterprise computing solution that uses Sun Microsystems' Java technology, including JavaBeans components, to develop and deploy applications throughout an organization via the Internet or an intranet. Scalable from the desktop to the enterprise. These JWAVE applications let users visually interpret OLAP data.

JWAVE's component-based JavaBeans let the customer develop applications within their integrated development environment (IDE) of choice. JWAVE's JavaBeans give the customer quick access to basic visualization and analysis functionality right out of the box. When more advanced functionality is required, JWAVE is fully extensible and customizable to meet the customer's needs. This customization is typically done by the customer or by Visual Numerics Consulting Services unit.

"Visual Numerics recognizes that BI solutions are comprised of several pieces of technology," Kainer said, "Our ability to draw information from a customer's data meshes well with these other pieces of technology, including data warehouses, OLAP applications, and querying/reporting tools from vendors such as Oracle, Brio, Business Objects, Cognos, Information Advantage, and Hyperion. Knitted together, all these technologies form a cohesive BI solution. JWAVE supports this combination of technologies as the next-generation paradigm in data analysis for the BI market."

JWAVE works with several of today's leading integrated development environments, including Visual Cafe, JBuilder, and VisualAge. The price of a JWAVE starter kit, which includes a single-user server license and two client developer licenses, is $8,795*.

Visit Visual Numeric on the Web at http://www.vni.com/BI.