New Synera Exploration Database Program, Applying the Power of the Unisys ES7000 Server, Searches 1.4 Billion Records in a Tenth of a Second

Business Wire, Nov 13, 2000

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

MINNEAPOLIS and BLUE BELL, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 13, 2000

Powerful system achieves "speed of thought" in

e-business data analysis

In a speed and scalability test that pushed the boundaries of business intelligence, Synera Corporation and Unisys have established a new benchmark in commercial data analysis, the companies announced today.

Powered by a 32-processor Unisys e-@ction Enterprise Server ES7000 using the Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server operating environment, the new Synera Intelligent Exploration suite, an exploration database (XDB) product, easily searched over 1.4 billion individual records in just one-tenth of a second.

The test recreated the information available within a typical commercial point-of-sale (POS) environment.

The Synera Intelligent Exploration suite makes large volumes of data generated in business transactions easily accessible for exploration, decision support, and e-commerce analyses. By simplifying the complex and costly data structures required by conventional business intelligence systems, the software helps enterprises load, store, extract and analyze data in a more efficient way.

"The database exploration performance we saw in this test is unheard-of using conventional data analysis technology," says Tim Bates, CEO of Synera Corporation, a wholly owned company of Synera Systems. "This test met our expectations and confirmed our ability to create a highly scalable 'speed of thought' analytical environment for retailers' e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar sales channels and other organizations needing high-speed analysis. With Synera, you just load the data and start analyzing."

The new measure of speed and scalability demonstrated in the test shows that the size of even the very largest corporate data resources is no longer a barrier to quickly uncovering global trends and patterns needed to make strategic business decisions.

"The results of this test were astonishing, exceeding even our most optimistic predictions," said Peter Samson, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Server Business, Unisys Systems and Technology. "Capitalizing on Synera's uniquely powerful software, Unisys has proven yet again that the ES7000 and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server continue to set performance records, giving customers an unmatched platform for the most rigorous e-business applications."

Test methodology and results

Synera and Unisys completed complex information analysis from a large number of detail transactions, a moderate number of customers and a relatively small amount of supporting information. In total, the test included 1.4 billion transaction records, 1 million customer records and a relatively small number of products, categories and stores.

One notable result of the test was that the time required to complete queries remained under one second regardless of the size of the database. "We call this process 'flatlining,' when the query response times remain the same on an ever growing database," said Bates.

The results indicate that the Synera XDB could handle as many as 20 billion records, a total database size of at least 10 terabytes, and at least 1,000 active concurrent users running on the Unisys ES7000 server.

Unisys e-@ction Enterprise Server ES7000

Based on the revolutionary Unisys Cellular MultiProcessing (CMP) architecture, the ES7000 provides an array of computing capabilities required for enterprise-class e-business computing and well known to users of large-scale computers, but unprecedented in computing environments using Microsoft and Intel technology.

A de facto standard architecture in the market for large-scale Microsoft- and Intel-based servers, CMP technology is also sold by Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and ICL.

Designed for the power of future Intel IA-64 Itanium processors, the ES7000 today accommodates up to 32 Intel Pentium III Xeon processors, which can be field-upgraded to IA-64 Itanium when that technology becomes available or combined with Itanium processors in the same server.

These advantages enable the ES7000 to match the performance of UNIX systems in enterprise-class e-business and other critical applications at a fraction of the price.

About Synera

Synera Systems is a software development company founded in 1996 that is revolutionizing the world of information management. With its breakthrough Synera Integrated Value model, Synera Systems has built end-user products and development platforms that enable businesses to respond knowledgeably "at the speed of thought" to changing market conditions.

Synera Systems has offices in North America, Latin America and Europe. R&D headquarters are in Barcelona, Spain and its Marketing and Sales headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Presently the company has over 80 employees in six countries. For more information on the company, access the Synera home page on the World Wide Web at www.synerasystems.com.

About Unisys

Unisys is an e-business solutions company whose 36,000 employees help customers in 100 countries apply information technology to seize opportunities and overcome challenges of the Internet economy. Unisys people integrate and deliver the solutions, services, platforms and network infrastructure required by business and government to transform their organizations for success in this new era.