Insightful Announces S-PLUS 7
Software enables analysis of large data sets and development of enterprise applications for delivery of statistics across the enterprise
SEATTLE April 11, 2005 Insightful Corporation®, a leading provider of advanced statistical software for analysis of numeric and text data, announced today the release of S PLUS® 7, an update to the de facto industry standard software platform for statistical data analysis and predictive analytics. S-PLUS 7 supports analysis of very large data sets and the rapid development of analytic applications that integrate advanced statistical methods within existing business processes. Decision-makers benefit from the deployment of advanced analytics across the enterprise.
With S-PLUS 7, statisticians, developers, and IT personnel use a new integrated development environment (IDE) on top of the flexible and elegant S programming language to rapidly develop, integrate, and deploy advanced analytic solutions. A new pipeline architecture in S-PLUS 7 allows for the preparation, manipulation, and analysis of very large data sets, thereby enabling companies to solve analytic problems not solvable before. S-PLUS 7 offers rich visualization and reporting capabilities that can be delivered from a back-office server to Web portals to improve information sharing required for effective decision-making.
"From our research, we see the interest in ‘advanced analytics’ growing steadily within the Business Intelligence (BI) marketplace,” said Howard Dresner, vice-president and Gartner Fellow of Gartner, Inc. “As the base of BI users continues to grow dramatically, it has exposed the need for more in-depth and profound types of analyses.”
“S-PLUS 7 is a major step forward in delivering on our mission to expand the usage of S PLUS beyond its traditional position as a de facto standard for analytic model prototyping, data exploration, and visualization on statisticians’ desktops,” said Jeff Coombs, CEO of Insightful. “This release enhances the capabilities of S-PLUS to include wide deployment in production environments analyzing gigabytes of data that are deployed to hundreds of users across the enterprise. S-PLUS 7 is the result of scores of interviews with Insightful customers across a spectrum of industries and extensive testing to ensure that it met our customers’ high demands for quality and scalability required for large production deployment,” said Coombs.
KEY FEATURES IN S-PLUS 7.0
Pipeline Architecture for Scalable Performance: S-PLUS 7 adds a major and highly anticipated new capability to S-PLUS - the ability to read, manipulate, and analyze extremely large data sets. The new, patent-pending “pipeline architecture” works by streaming large data sets instead of reading the entire data set into memory at once. S PLUS is now designed to allow users to analyze gigabytes of data on their existing hardware, without needing to purchase additional RAM or migrate to 64-bit operating systems.
Modern Environment for Robust Application Development: The S programming language has long been recognized as the premier environment for rapid creation of statistical applications. The elegance of this 4GL language combined with its comprehensive library of statistical, graphical, and data-processing techniques – including a new library for analysis of correlated data, and improved methods for manipulating time series data – enables S-PLUS users to create new applications up to ten times faster than with competing systems. With the S-PLUS Workbench – a new interface to S-PLUS designed for the needs of development teams – programmers can create more reliable applications faster than ever before. Based on the industry-standard Eclipse™ framework, the S-PLUS Workbench offers developers a syntax-aware code editor, tools for project and task management, code validation and error correction, and much more. Because the S-PLUS Workbench integrates with all standard source control systems, development teams will be able to manage large projects reliably when developing applications for integration with business processes.
Integration of Advanced Statistical Applications Enterprise-wide: Designed with an open architecture and flexible interfaces, S-PLUS 7 is an ideal platform for integrating advanced statistical techniques into existing business processes. Applications developed on the desktop, using the most comprehensive suite of statistical, graphical and data processing methods available, are easily be deployed to production environments using C++, Java™, or OLE APIs, or integrated with batch jobs or Web-based or other client/server applications, using the S-PLUS Server product.
Flexible Charts and Reports for Improved Communication. Statisticians know how valuable their work can be to improve decision making and efficiency throughout the organization. The graphical and reporting capabilities of the S-PLUS product family help ensure the project and business teams realize the value, too.
An interactive graphical system enables the creation of statistical charts to exact specifications, which can then be pasted directly into Microsoft® Office applications. Graphlets®, unique to S-PLUS, allow application developers to embed custom interactive graphics into Web pages, enabling business users to zoom, select, and drill down to answer specific questions or hyperlink to supporting information. Detailed reports incorporating statistical tables and graphics can be updated with the latest data and automatically generated using an XML-based report generation system.
Availability and Platforms
S-PLUS 7 is available today for Windows®, Sun Solaris® and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux. More information is available at http://www.insightful.com/splus. S-PLUS Server will be available in Q2.
About Insightful
Insightful Corporation (NASDAQ:IFUL) provides enterprises with scalable data analysis solutions that drive better decisions faster by revealing patterns, trends, and relationships. For more information, visit http://www.insightful.com, e-mail info@insightful.com, or call 1-800-569-0123.
S-PLUS, Insightful, Insightful Corporation, the Insightful logo, and Graphlets are trademarks or registered trademarks of Insightful Corporation. Java, Sun, and Solaris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Red Hat is a trademark of Red Hat Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Tovalds. Microsoft Office, Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Eclipse is a trademark or registered trademark of the Eclipse Foundation. Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
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Note to Investors - Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements about the status of S-PLUS as a de facto standard; growth in the interest in advanced analytics in the BI marketplace; the capabilities of S-PLUS 7 (including scalability, deployability and tasks and productivity improvements that users can accomplish with the product); trends specific to the life sciences, financial services and manufacturing industries; the capabilities of competing products now or in the past; and customer acceptance of our software products. Forward-looking statements are based on the judgment and opinions of management at the time the statements are made. Inaccurate assumptions and known and unknown risks and uncertainties can affect the accuracy of forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements for a number of reasons, including, without limitation, the risks associated with errors or defects in our software; the risks associated with our ability to compete in the markets we serve; and the risks associated with market demand and customer acceptance of our products. More detailed information regarding these and other factors that could affect actual results is set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. You should not unduly rely on these forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this release. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, events, or circumstances after the date of this release or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated events.