Megaputer Intelligence has boosted the power and scalability and improved the user interface of its PolyAnalyst text and data mining tool with version 6.0.

First introduced in 1997, this analytics software has numerous algorithms, an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) engine, and a trends analysis engine to help businesses find patterns and trends, clusters and categories, amid masses of figures and text. The goal: to improve tasks such as risk analysis, fraud detection, call center analysis, patient safety assessment, market evaluations, and airport studies.

All numbers and text are classified into data sets, processed through a vendor-neutral configuration interface into a common format, and then copied into PolyAnalyst where they can be analyzed, according to product manager Josh Froelich.

PolyAnalyst 6.0 has been redesigned from the ground up in response to customer feedback, he explains. First of all, it has been rewritten from a desktop to a server application, which expands its scope to the enterprise. And its data processing and storage capacity has been boosted tenfold, “massively” extending its scalability, he says. Similarly, the speed of text indexing has been accelerated 100 times, adds CEO Sergei Ananyan.

Second, the user interface has been significantly improved and is much more intuitive, enabling users to initiate what-if scenarios by drag-and-drop, Froelich says. And third, he adds, the reports are more attractive aesthetically as well as more interactive, with drill-down capability, multimedia options, and e-mail alerts. Lastly, the client/server architecture enables users to split processing among multiple computers, says Froelich.

CEO Ananyan adds that PolyAnalyst’s competitive advantage is its offering of complete data analysis in all its steps from extraction to data cleansing, advanced analytics, reporting and OLAP. It also has very flexible reporting.

Major competitors vary according to different market niches: in visual analytics, competitors are SAS and SPSS; in OLAP, Cognos and Business Objects; and in reports, Crystal Reports.

Customers include Hewlett-Packard, Marriott International, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, the FAA, the National Transportation Safety Board, and the Department of Defense.

Pricing starts at $19,000 for the standalone desktop version and at $59,000 for the server version. A typical enterprise version ranges in price from $100,000 to $400,000.

For more information, go to: www.megaputer.com