PTI Announces Free Beta Program for Release 2 of Its Powerhouse Predictive Analytics Software; Beta Program Intended for Anyone Active in Data Mining and Analytics at All Experience Levels.

LEOMINSTER, Mass. -- Release 2 to Include Significant Enhancements and Flexible New Interface That Further Hides Complexity While Optimizing Analyst Performance and Productivity

PTI, an emerging developer of easy-to-use high performance business analytics solutions, today unveiled a beta program for Release 2 of its Powerhouse(TM) Professional Edition software. PTI welcomes experienced data analysts to download and use the software for free after signing up for the beta program on the company's website (www.pti.com). The program will last for approximately 90 days to invite user feedback prior to the product's planned general release in the first quarter of 2006. Beta program participants who pay for a full commercial license ($5,000 per seat) prior to its official launch date will get the first year of maintenance at no charge.

PTI formally introduced Powerhouse Release 1 in October following four years of development and one year of successful field trials in production environments. Used to analyze large amounts of data for maximum business intelligence effectiveness, Powerhouse has been shown to deliver more actionable information in less time at a lower cost than any other predictive and explanatory analytics tool. Data preparation, a major time drain, is not needed when using Powerhouse. This benefit, combined with automating manual analysis tasks and other efficiencies, can reduce analytics process time by up to 95 percent.

"We've completed our internal testing of Release 2 and now want to ensure that it's fully robust for production environments, so we are seeking the widest possible participation in our beta program from experienced modeling practitioners," said Patricia Thompson, president and CEO of PTI.

Release 2 provides a new flexible interface that represents a complete repackaging of the core technology used in Powerhouse Release 1. In addition, there are significant enhancements in measuring model quality and improved clustering that further boost productivity and ease of use.

According to Thompson, the new interface is the fulfillment of PTI's two fundamental goals. "Those goals are to hide the complexity of the analytics process that helps users optimize their time, and to provide transparency in interpreting the business value of the results," she said. "In this way, users at all experience levels can focus on solving business problems, not on the technical underpinnings of a software tool. Also, the combination of simplicity, speed and analytic efficiency of Powerhouse open up a new realm of analysis possibilities for those who have been relying solely on BI reporting tools."

To participate in the program, users must accept a beta license and agree to test the program for functionality, report potential bugs and make suggestions to increase functionality or improve performance. Three beta versions are planned, and each will work for a period of six weeks. Updated versions will be available to download from the PTI website. User feedback will be accepted via email at [e-mail].

Release 2 Highlights

The Powerhouse environment in Release 2 is designed to accommodate users of different skill levels and to allow modelers and analysts to use whichever capabilities may be most appropriate for their needs at the moment. Regardless of which approach users may initially select, they always have access to all of the analytical tools in Powerhouse. There are three interface options:

--1-Button Modeling(TM) -- offers the simplest path to analyzing and modeling a dataset and achieves the ultimate objective of predictive analytics: parameter-free modeling.

--Auto Wizard -- allows the user to make additional choices for project set up, providing more flexibility without requiring additional technicality.

--Power Tools -- allow for maximum user involvement and direct access to all of the analytics tools in Powerhouse, including tools with the same functionality as those in Release 1.28.

"Whichever interface option the user chooses, they will find that time savings and ease of use are not made at the expense of quality of the results," said Dorian Pyle, PTI's chief scientist and inventor of the Powerhouse techniques. "Quite to the contrary, Release 2 offers improved speed and performance compared to Release 1. Powerhouse now delivers the most quantifiably accurate and reliable results possible, the first time, from the data provided even faster than before."

Powerhouse Release 2 enhancements include new measures of model quality and improved clustering. In the area of model quality, the optimum balance of accuracy and reliability found in Powerhouse Release 1 has been strengthened in Release 2 with the addition of two measures intended for non-technical users: model accuracy and model reliability. Other new technical measures of model quality will also be available.

Additional enhancements in Powerhouse 2 include an improved clustering using the OPTICL(TM) model that allows users to fully explore and characterize the information relationships through simple visualizations. Other enhancements include greater flexibility and more functions for exploring data, greater information separation for improved visualization, and improvements in generating and comparing Heat Maps.

About PTI

PTI (Powerhouse Technologies Inc) is a privately held company that has developed a radical new approach to high-performance, customer-proven business analytics software. Its Powerhouse(TM) analytic software suite delivers more actionable information in less time at a lower cost than any other predictive and explanatory analytics tool. For more information, visit www.pti.com or call [phone].

All trademarks, service marks and company names are the property of their respective owners.