Spotfire Hosts Second Annual Users' Conferences in the U.S. and Europe.

Business/Technology Editors

SOMERVILLE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 19, 2002

Presenters include technology inventor Nolan Bushnell and VIP

Customers from pharmaceutical, energy and manufacturing industries 

Product analytic software provider Spotfire(R), Inc. today announced it will host its second annual users' conferences next month, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia and the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles, France. Building on the resounding success of last year's conference, Spotfire will provide the same first-class presentations, accommodations and activities. This year's conference theme is The Art and Science of Great Decision-Making. New to the conference is a one-day Developers Workshop where customers will experience how to configure analytic applications for any business process.

"Last year's users' conference was a powerful forum for users of Spotfire DecisionSite(TM) to learn more about optimizing the product for use in their own enterprises and to share ideas with their peers in other industries," said Spotfire CEO Christopher Ahlberg. "We at Spotfire also learn a great deal about how our customers are using our products, and leverage this information in future product development and enhancements. This year's conference promises to be rewarding for all."

Nolan Bushnell, technology inventor, best known as the founder of Atari, will deliver this year's keynote address. Arguably the father of computer entertainment, Nolan Bushnell founded Atari in 1972 and subsequently launched the video-game revolution with the ultra-popular "Pong." He sold Atari in 1976 for $28 million, and the following year opened the first Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant, combining fast food and video games under one roof. Currently CEO and founder of uWink, Inc., an electronic entertainment systems network, Bushnell has founded more than 20 companies, including Catalyst Technologies, Etak, Androbot, Axlon, Irata, AAPPS and ByVideo.

The Europe conference will be held April 25-26, and the U.S. conference, April 30-May 1. Each gives Spotfire customers, end-users, managers and IT personnel a chance to take part in presentations, keynote addresses, breakout sessions and special events. Participants will:

-- learn how analytics gives unprecedented decision making power to any business process by integrating people, information and role-based analysis tools;

-- see how colleagues use Spotfire to make a difference in their work and for their organizations; and

-- share ideas for new and enhanced Spotfire products and services.

Each conference will be accompanied by a separate developers' workshop for Spotfire DecisionSite, the company's flagship product. DecisionSite provides an integrated analytic application environment and decision platform for analyzing the wealth of data produced in any product lifecycle process. The DecisionSite developers' workshop is a separate day of training for power users and application programming interface (API) developers. Spotfire will conduct the workshop May 2. The users' conferences and training programs are open to all Spotfire customers at no charge.

Session speakers presenting at one or both of the conferences include:

-- Christopher Lipinski, Senior Research Fellow, New Lead Discovery & Development, Pfizer

-- Sheldon Ort, Information Officer, Global Manufacturing & Supply Services IT, Eli Lilly

-- Frances Stewart, Director and Site Head, Cheminformatics, GlaxoSmithKline

-- Bissan Al-Lazikani, Inpharmatica

-- Marcel de Leeuw, IT Director, Genome Express

-- Peder Svensson, Carlsson Research

-- Julian Cherryman, Avecia

-- Gabriel Fuchs, La Suisse Insurances

-- Rob Lucito, Cold Spring Harbor Labs

-- Joe Lebowitz, Director, Yield Engineering, Kilby Center, Texas Instruments

-- Dave Nick, Informatics Analyst, Infinity Pharmaceuticals

-- Vivek Sood, U.S. Federal Aviation Administration 

-- Petr Kocis, Ph.D., Associate Director, Enabling Science & Technology, Chemistry, AstraZeneca R&D Boston

-- Dr. Everard Pap, Manager, Assay Technologies, HTS Department, Aventis Pharmaceuticals

-- David Rickman, Research Scientist, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 

-- Geoff Jones, Senior Consultant, Plant Floor Information Systems, BASF IT Services BV

For additional information on the Spotfire users' conferences, visit the company's Web site at http://www.spotfire.com/news_events/conferences/users2002/default.asp.

About Spotfire

Spotfire(R), Inc. provides analytic applications and services for product lifecycle decision-making. Spotfire accelerates decision-making by empowering end-users and their enterprises to integrate business processes with analytics that visually query massive quantities of data with continuous "what if" analysis. Spotfire customers quickly save costs and improve decisions on how products are developed, manufactured, distributed, marketed and sold. More than 400 global 2000 customers and over 16,000 users work with Spotfire products worldwide. The company maintains U.S. headquarters in Somerville, Mass., and European headquarters in Goteborg, Sweden. Additional information can be found at http://www.spotfire.com.