Belmont Research launches CrossGraphs; Advanced data visualization and graphical reporting combine to meet the access and distribution needs of emerging data warehouse market.

TYSON'S CORNER, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 8, 1996--Belmont Research Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., today announced CrossGraphs, advanced data visualization and graphical reporting software, at the Second Annual Conference of the Data Warehousing Institute (July 8 - 13).

Uniquely architected to present data in arrays of graphs that reveal important trends and relationships, CrossGraphs is the industry's only data visualization product that can automatically divide data into subsets and iteratively create many graphs, one graph per subset, on one or many pages without programming.

"CrossGraphs helps people understand large amounts of complex data quickly and consistently," says Chan Russell, president of Belmont Research. Unlike spreadsheets or other business intelligence tools that show single views of data, CrossGraphs allows users to view a series of graphs simultaneously. "This capability shows users the big picture," continues Russell, "enabling them to easily spot trends, identify anomalies and see relationships among several different variables in a single display."

CrossGraphs' Development

CrossGraphs was created in collaboration with the Harvard School of Public Health to help identify patterns in large clinical databases. With assistance from users at academic centers, pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies, CrossGraphs was enhanced with a wide range of specialized graphical techniques for presenting data to support drug research and development.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is evaluating CrossGraphs as a new tool to support effective graphical review of complex medical data in assessing new drug safety. "CrossGraphs shows promise," notes David Moss, director of the FDA's Division of Information Systems Design, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, "as a way to help medical reviewers visualize detailed data about each patient and see relationships among diverse drug safety, drug treatment and patient variables."

"CrossGraphs is a remarkably powerful and elegant tool for rapidly visualizing high-integrity clinical data," says Wayne Kubick, vice president of Worldwide Information Systems at Parexel International. Parexel, a worldwide leading consulting organization for pharmaceutical companies, uses CrossGraphs in new drug clinical trials. "We've found that CrossGraphs dramatically improves the understanding, insight and decision making of our pharmaceutical industry clients," continues Kubick.

CrossGraphs is deployed in business, engineering and scientific environments to visualize complex, multidimensional data. For example, marketing managers gain breadth and depth of business knowledge by using CrossGraphs to view sales performance data in many graphs -- by the competition, product, attribute, region, sales channel, market segment, time period or a combination of these dimensions.

Technical Features

Extending beyond traditional spreadsheets, CrossGraphs' offers a rich selection of graph types to help people visualize patterns and exceptions in multidimensional, time-ordered and spatial data. CrossGraphs' advanced partitioning capabilities divide data into variety of subsets, giving users in-depth views of their business. Data can be partitioned by quantiles, equal range, cut point, and percentages, or grouped by year, quarter, month, week, day, hour, minute and second.

Easy to use, CrossGraphs eliminates tedious programming. Its graphical interface allows users to:

-- quickly explore data; -- combine data from diverse databases and files; and -- easily produce sophisticated presentation reports.

CrossGraphs can be used interactively as a data visualization and exploration tool, or run in batch to produce periodic reports. These reports can be displayed immediately, printed, or saved as downloadable graphics files to support efficient network distribution enterprise-wide.

Platform Support

CrossGraphs runs on industry-leading platforms including, personal computers with Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows95 and Windows NT; Sun workstations with SunOS or Solaris; and Hewlett-Packard workstations with HP-UX. The system interfaces to a variety of data sources including dBase, Oracle, text data files, SAS datasets and ODBC-compliant sources. A Customization Option lets programmers extend CrossGraphs with new graph types and data interfaces designed specifically for their company's unique needs. This option also supports integration with other software, via Windows OLE automation.

Pricing and Availability

CrossGraphs is shipping directly from Belmont Research. In North America, pricing starts at $795.00 for all Windows platforms; and $1595 per user for systems running on SunOS, Solaris and HP-UX. The Customization Option is priced at $1995 per programmer on Windows, and $3995 on SunOS, Solaris and HP-UX.

Belmont Research Inc.

Belmont Research develops, markets and supports data visualization, data management and rapid application development software for organizations that require innovative solutions for retrieving, understanding, managing and reporting complex data.

Belmont's technologies help companies improve the cost and quality of products, quickly bring those products to markets and compete effectively. The company's worldwide customer base includes leading engineering, scientific and business organizations involved in information-intensive industries such as, biotechnology, government, microelectronics and pharmaceuticals. Founded in 1990, the company has offices in Cambridge (Mass.), San Mateo (Calif.), and Brussels (Belgium).

Belmont Research is headquartered at 84 Sherman Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02140. Tel: [phone]; Fax: [phone]; Email: [e-mail]; Web Site: http://www.belmont.com. -0-

CrossGraphs is a trademark of Belmont Research Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: James Ong or Jacquelyn Thrasivoulos

Belmont Research Public Relations 

617-868-6878; x208 508-881-3109

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