Management Information Tools Announces New Version of the MITS Product Suite.

Business Editors

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 1, 2002

Release 4.2 Provides Significant Usability, Performance and

Administrative Enhancements

Management Information Tools, Inc., the leading developer of Online Analytical Processing/Business Intelligence (OLAP/BI) tools for the MultiValue database market, announced the availability of the next version of its MITS platform. MITS, the acronym for Management Information Tool Software, is an OLAP/BI suite of products designed to gather, manage, distribute and analyze data for improved strategic and tactical decision-making.

MITS is the only OLAP tool with true drill-down capabilities that is native to the MultiValue environment, and the enhanced version 4.2 further facilitates more powerful and efficient decision-making. MITS leverages the superior flexibility of the extended relational model, delivering analytical processing within the same database used by the business applications. This advantage permits VARs to offer its customers tremendous analytical functionality that is cost-effective because it avoids the need for separate hardware and complicated non-MultiValue data extraction techniques.

"As the MultiValue leader in business intelligence tools, we have seen customer installations grow from department projects to enterprise-wide deployments," said Pat Gilbrough, president of Management Information Tools. "Not surprisingly, as more users are added, the MITS system must become more flexible to meet a wide variety of end user needs and corporate technology standards. Release 4.2 underscores our commitment to the industry--to improve and streamline our OLAP technology, expand the market opportunity for VARS, and ensure the customer's business remains competitive via powerful business intelligence capabilities."

The MITS platform features five components used to extract data from a MultiValue database, package it into a highly usable cube form, and allow users to see overall trends, or drill down and interactively explore the data. Additionally, two new components have been added in version 4.2--MitsWeb and MitsWeb gateway--allowing any user to access the data via a standard Web browser.

Management Information Tools has added significant enhancements to this already innovative product suite in release 4.2, many of which are highlighted here:

o All Products:

- A new Dataflow component has been added to all MITS products to enhance and simplify the connection interface to MitsServer. This includes new splash screen graphics and better flow control to resolve connection problems.

o MitsServer:

- System functionality has been given a boost with the addition of event logging for performance monitoring.

- User control has been increased for stopping, starting and monitoring builds.

- A faster cube-sorting algorithm was added to assist in sorting cubes after builds.

- New interfaces have been added to MitsAdmin Security enhancements

- MitsServer 4.2 has been upgraded to process requests from the MitsWeb gateway and generate output in HTML and JavaScript format for presentation back to the user, using the new MitsWeb component.

- The MitsServer User Guide has been augmented for both online users and those who prefer the printed manual.

o MitsView:

- The Flash Screen Selector has been enhanced to display details about Flash Screens.

- The Dataflow window is now resizable.

- MitsView forms can retain their parent state (within the print, chart and detail display functions).

o MitsAdmin:

- Version 4.2 now includes a GUI interface for scheduling builds and more efficient monitoring of builds and application information.

- A "stop" and "start" auto-run scheduler has been added.

- A new Event Logger reporting feature includes export-to-Excel functionality.

o MitsMaker:

- The Eon Loader and Ending Calculator are now independent features in release 4.2, providing MITS users more flexibility.

- A new feature, Optional Parameters, has been added to allow storing non-standard options with the system's configuration. This enables the system to support extra features that may be supported on the server but do not have an equivalent in MitsMaker.

- The "Attachments" feature has been improved to include typical files, simplifying the deployment of MITS applications.

o MitsWeb: This is the newest addition to the MITS Product Suite, acting as a zero footprint client for viewing MITS hypercubes using a Web browser. MitsWeb offers the same robust capabilities as MitsView, including:

o Produce valuable reports from MITS hypercubes of several years of data within seconds.

o Drill down into MITS hypercubes in ad hoc fashion to quickly discover underlying trends.

o Create 2D and 3D bar graphs and pie charts or quickly export data to other tools such as MS Excel.

About Management Information Tools, Inc.

Based in Seattle, Washington, Management Information Tools, Inc., is the developer of the MITS Online Analytical Processing/Business Intelligence system that incorporates technology allowing the creation of OLAP hypercubes and a data-warehousing environment on an enterprise's existing host computer. MITS systems are firmly entrenched in a wide range of business areas: distribution, manufacturing, healthcare and services, to name a few. MITS is available on many MultiValue databases, including UniData(R), UniVerse(R), D3(R), jBASE(R), mvBASE(R) and mvENTERPRISE(R), and may be ported to other MultiValue databases in the future. Through an exclusive agreement with IBM, the MITS product line is sold and distributed through the U2(TM) worldwide channel sales force, which includes over 600 value-added resellers of the U2 product family, including UniData and UniVerse, SB+, wIntegrate(R) and RedBack(R). For more information, visit www.mitsonline.com.