Software offers real-time analytics platform.

Visual Sciences Jun 05, 2007

Press Release Summary:

Based on real-time data wheel technology, Platform 5(TM) can benefit any organization that relies on data cube-based, on-line analytical processing solutions. Interactive data visualization interface enables direct interrogation, exploration, and rapid understanding of broad trends and granular details in data. Multi-dimensional analysis capabilities allow creation and update of very large numbers of related data dimensions on ongoing, real-time basis.

Original Press Release:

Visual Sciences' Technology Platform 5 Unveiled

Leading Real-time Analytics Platform Provides Fast Answers to the Hardest Data Questions

SAN DIEGO, May 9 /- Visual Sciences, Inc. (formerly known as WebSideStory, Inc.) (NASDAQ:WSSI), a leading provider of real-time analytics applications, today announced the general availability of its Visual Sciences' Technology Platform 5(TM). Platform 5, a tera-scale real-time analytics platform, harnesses the explosion of data facing Visual Sciences clients with superior performance, understandability, flexibility, granularity and scalability. Platform 5 serves as the foundation for Visual Sciences' industry-leading real-time analytics applications, including Visual Site(R) and Visual Call(R), and is also used by Visual Sciences' clients to quickly deploy real-time analytics solutions tailored to their unique requirements. The real-time data wheel technology at the core of Visual Sciences' Technology Platform 5 can provide measurable benefits for any organization today that relies on data cube-based on-line analytical processing solutions.

Organizations today are facing an explosion of data. For many enterprises, much of this data comes from the increasing variety of ways that customers interact and engage with their organizations, such as Web sites, interactive voice response (IVR) systems and next-generation points-of-sale. This explosion is outrunning the capability of organizations to make sense of the data at the same time that executives are mandating that their organizations become real-time enterprises. Keeping up with the growing stream of real-time customer data is only one aspect of the problem -- the ability to answer questions posed by executive management in real-time from the growing base of historical customer data is equally daunting for most organizations. Conventional business intelligence solutions that use a cube-based approach to on-line analytical processing cannot cope with the volume or complexity of the customer data being created and stored. In contrast, the Visual Sciences' Platform delivers two breakthrough technologies for large dataset analytics: a real-time analytics engine that eliminates the overhead and data loss of data cubes; and an interactive data visualization interface that enables direct interrogation, exploration and the rapid understanding of both broad trends and granular details in the data.

"The real-time analytics engine in Platform 5 represents an entirely different approach to the analysis of streaming and stored data," said Jim MacIntyre, chief executive officer of Visual Sciences. "The data wheels technology at the core of Platform 5 is a revolutionary departure from data cube-based on-line analytical processing systems popular today. Platform 5 allows users of Visual Sciences' real-time analytics applications to interact with and explore the data in real-time through the speed of its data access technology, to incorporate real-time data on a continuous basis without the periodic batch processing typical of cube-based solutions, to summarize the data while at the same time allowing the drill-down to detail, to explore for correlation in thousands of customers or other data dimensions while calculating new results for segmented business metrics on the fly, and to integrate new data sources quickly as business needs dictate."

The capabilities delivered in Platform 5 reinforce the company's mission: to help organizations optimize their businesses by delivering fast answers to hard questions. Platform 5 delivers parallel data processing and integration, as well as innovative multi-dimensional analysis capabilities that allow the creation and update of very large numbers of related data dimensions on an ongoing, real-time basis.

Platform 5, the 5.0 version of the Visual Sciences' Technology Platform, adds significant new features and benefits to its industry leading real-time analytics application platform. All Visual Site, Visual Call, Visual Mail(TM) and other Visual Sciences' application clients will gain the features added in Platform 5 when they update their Platform 5 components (e.g., Visual Server, Visual Workstation(R), etc.) and in some cases configure their system to take advantage of such features. Platform 5 provides a number of important features that are the result of its core technology and forward-thinking architecture, including the following features:

o Performance. Platform 5 installations will typically experience a two to eight times improvement in query speeds over Platform 4 installations depending upon the hardware platform used in the deployment. Platform 4 was already the fastest commercially available real-time analytics platform. In addition, enhanced system diagnostics and performance reporting enable system administrators and data architects to see how data is being processed from start to finish in a single location to help with further performance optimization of operational systems.

o Usability. Platform 5 has added multi-lingual support and can display any foreign language. A simple to use natural language segmentation filter editor has been added allowing segments to be defined in editable natural language statements. In addition, an easy-to-use interactive analysis tool has been added to the platform to significantly shorten the time required to do certain types of forensic drill down analysis.

o Scalability. Platform 5 leverages 64-bit hardware and also remains available in a 32-bit server version. The 64-bit Visual Server version allows the use of 32GB of RAM, enabling the system to support even larger numbers of simultaneous users. Platform 5 can scale to tens of terabytes on commodity computer hardware.

o Granularity. Platform 5 allows even the largest data dimensions to be loaded without truncation or loss. This breakthrough Visual Sciences' technology allows for efficient storage and processing of dimensions with a large number of elements (e.g., campaigns, pages, etc.). These dimensions may hold millions or billions of elements without truncation or "roll-off," allowing users to drill down to any level of granularity, for instance to an individual customer.

o Flexibility. Platform 5 allows administrators to design visualizations with their own data schemas quickly and easily. The open schema is displayed in easy-to-understand visualizations so that end-users can understand the structure of the data they are analyzing. Flexible time dimensions allow multiple time scales within the same Platform 5 dataset allowing analysis time to match custom organizational time related rules. In addition, users gain the flexibility to run Visual Workstation on almost any modern notebook or laptop computer, enabling wider distribution within organizations and eliminating the need to purchase new equipment.

Visual Sciences Platform 5 is now shipping for new licensees and is available to current licensees as part of their on-demand service subscription or software maintenance agreement.

About Visual Sciences
Founded in 1996, Visual Sciences, Inc. (formerly known as WebSideStory, Inc.) (NASDAQ:WSSI) is a leading provider of real-time analytics applications. The company's analytics applications, based on its patent pending on-demand service and software platform, enable fast and detailed analytics on large volumes of streaming and stored data. More than 1,570 enterprises worldwide rely on the answers delivered by these applications to provide them with actionable intelligence to optimize their business operations. The company provides real-time analytics applications for Web sites, contact centers, retail points-of-sale, messaging systems and the intelligence community. Visual Sciences flexible technology platform, Visual Sciences Technology Platform 5(TM), allows the company to rapidly introduce tailored solutions to meet its clients' needs. Visual Sciences is headquartered in San Diego, Calif., and has East Coast offices in Herndon, Virginia and European headquarters in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. For more information, contact Visual Sciences. Voice: 858.546.0040. Fax: 858.546.0480. Address: 10182 Telesis Court, 6th Floor, San Diego, CA 92121. Web site: www.visualsciences.com. Visual Sciences is a registered trademark of Visual Sciences, Inc.