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SEATTLE, WA., February 12, 2001 /PRNewswire/ - The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), the premier educational association in the data warehousing and business intelligence industry, proudly announces nine finalists in the 2001 Pioneering Products Competition. TDWI's Pioneering Products Shootout is designed to highlight leading-edge products in emerging technology areas and to inform data warehousing and business intelligence professionals of the latest market innovations.

This year's competition focused on two key areas of emerging technology. "There is exploding interest in CRM solutions, which makes the Customer Analytics category especially relevant for this year's competition," said Wayne Eckerson, Director of Research and Education for The Data Warehousing Institute. "Business intelligence tools and infrastructures play a vital role in optimizing customer interactions. The Data Visualization category is designed to show how visualization technologies are making it easier for a broader spectrum of users to analyze data and are helping sophisticated analysts better interpret and identify complex trends and patterns in data."

The panel of judges narrowed the submissions to four Data Visualization finalists, and five in the Customer Analytics category. The finalists will move to the next step, presenting their product during the March 1 Shootout and fielding questions from the moderator, a panel of judges, and the audience. At the end of the day, the judges will select a winner for each category.

"The Pioneering Products Competition brings together the hottest technologies of the year," said Herb Edelstein, President of Two Crows Corporation, moderator for the Pioneering Products Shootout, and head judge. "The competition was intense, with many high-quality, leading edge solutions vying for a finalist position in both categories. It was exciting to review the new technologies that focus on the leveraging the data warehouse for business users."

The Shoot Out
The nine finalists will compete in the head-to-head Pioneering Products Shout Out on Thursday, March 1 at the TDWI World Conference -- Winter 2001, February 25 - March 2, 2001 in Palm Springs, California. The Shootout will feature demonstrations by each of the finalists. The new technologies will be reviewed and selected, and judges will select the one product in each category they believe holds the most potential to revolutionize the practice of data warehousing in that area. The solutions will be judged for their Innovation, Usefulness, Value, Impact, and Uniqueness. The winning solution in each category will be recognized as the two Pioneering Products of 2001.

The following technologies and associated solution providers will compete for the Data Visualization Pioneering Product of 2001.

see POWER by Compudigm International Limited 2-8-01
SeePOWER takes large volumes of data from multiple sources and presents it as contoured, colored images and animations. This allows business executives to rapidly obtain qualitative and qualitative understanding of their business' information, interpret and understand it quickly, make decisions and then take prompt action.

TowerView by HighTower Software
TowerView is the premier business intelligence solution for companies that need to collect massive amounts of rapidly changing business data from real-time sources and databases and convert it into clear, manageable knowledge and results. With powerful monitoring and analysis capabilities and aided by an intuitive 3-D user interface, TowerView automatically detects data and trends that require immediate analysis, enabling companies to react quickly in real-time, prevent costly problems and capitalize on opportunities."

nViZn by Illumitek
Based on "The Grammar of Graphics," nViZn is a geometry engine that allows developers to define the exact two and three-dimensional visualizations, analytics, interactivity, and user experience to create a visually oriented analytic applications that solve a business problem as opposed to selecting pre-defined "chart types."

In3D by Visual Insights
Visual Insights In3D is the industry leading development suite for creating VisualDiscovery™ and realTime3D™ reporting solutions. Data from any source can be mapped into an intuitive 3D visual perspective, to form an information Landscape™ -- a picture of your data. In3D is designed to fit seamlessly into your application.

The following technologies and associated solution providers will compete for the Customer Analytics Pioneering Product of 2001.

Customer Information System by Blue Martini Software
Blue Martini's CIS includes over 20 modules, which include web store, call center, campaign management, merchandize management, content management, customer management, collaboration, wireless, data warehousing, reporting, data mining, data visualization, data transformations. The analytic-related components are packaged in a product called Blue Martini Marketing, which consolidates customer data, automatically identifies complex patterns in that data, and makes direct use of analytic insights with marketing automation tools.

Teradata CRM by Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation
Teradata CRM is a marketing optimization suite with six families of functionality: Analysis, Modeling, Communication, Personalization, Optimization and Interaction. Together, these tools analyze, model and predict customer behavior to plan and automate personalized dialogues with individual customers -- across all channels, based on a single view of all interactions. The result: optimized customer relationships and increasing business value.

The Quadstone System by Quadstone
Quadstone provides analytical software and services to retail/etail, financial services and telecommunications organizations to help them predict customer behavior and build more profitable customer relationships. Combining interactive visualization, advanced data mining algorithms and the power of parallel processing, the Quadstone System delivers rapid results for the business user.

Affinium Model by Unica Corporation
Affinium Model is a full-featured module within the Affinium suite addressing a complete range of data mining tasks from data importing and processing, to analysis and model building, to model deployment. It includes four integrated applications for customer valuation, segmentation, response modeling and cross selling.

WX/Web Analytics by White Cross Systems
The WX/WebAnalytics offering is designed to provide customers with a complete suite of analytical customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities. These have been customized to Support customers who leverage WhiteCross Systems' innovative operations for outsourced, reporting and analytical services to obtain a complete view of their customers' behavior spanning on-line and off-line channels.

About The Data Warehousing Institute
The Data Warehousing Institute™ (TDWI), a division of 101communications, is the premier provider of in-depth, high quality education and training in the data warehousing and business intelligence industry. TDWI is dedicated to educating business and information technology professionals about the strategies, techniques, and tools required to successfully design, build, and maintain data warehouses. It also fosters the advancement of data warehousing research and contributes to knowledge transfer and professional development of its Members. TDWI sponsors and promotes a worldwide membership program, annual educational conferences, regional educational seminars, onsite courses, solution provider partnerships, awards programs for the best practices and leadership in data warehousing and innovative technologies, resourceful publications, an in-depth research program, and a comprehensive Web site.

About 101communications
Founded in 1998, 101communications is an integrated media company in the business-to-business market aimed at the many specialized targets within the greater information technology community. 101's portfolio includes 15 magazines, more than 30 conferences and extensive digital offerings in the U.S. and Europe in five areas: Software Development (Application Development Trends, Java Report, Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, Application Development Advisor, JavaSPEKTRUM, OBJECTspektrum, SIGS/101 Conferences); Vertical Markets (Recharger Magazine, Recharger WorldExpo, Copier Marketplace, Syllabus, Syllabus Conferences); Certification (Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine, MCP TechMentor Conferences), Enterprise Technology (Enterprise Systems, ENT, Enterprise Linux, The Data Warehousing Institute, IT Events) and Government Technology (Federal Computer Week, civic.com). For more information on 101communications visit www.101com.com.

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