Spotfire Announces Open Chemistry Initiative and the First Analytical Environment for Leading Chemical Data Sources

Business Wire, August 2, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

SOMERVILLE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 2, 2002

Spotfire to distribute DeltaSoft's forms-based access to data stored in Oracle chemical database cartridges integrated with DecisionSite for Lead Discovery

Spotfire, Inc. today announced its Open Chemistry Initiative, combining Spotfire's new ChemCart for DecisionSite(TM) application with its DecisionSite for Lead Discovery(TM) 7.1 analytic application. The Open Chemistry Initiative makes it possible for chemists engaged in pharmaceutical drug discovery and chemical R&D to perform analysis accessing chemical structures and chemical-related data stored in multiple Oracle databases using chemical cartridges.

Spotfire will distribute DeltaSoft's ChemCart for DecisionSite software to its customers to provide out-of-the-box support for chemical data cartridges from all of the major cartridge vendors, including MDL, Daylight and Accelrys. Researchers use chemical cartridges to populate and search molecular chemical structure data in an Oracle database, the leading database for biotech and pharmaceutical research. Until Open Chemistry, pharmaceutical companies had to solve many technical issues involved in creating and deploying an end-user analysis environment for the different variations of chemistry data and supporting database platforms. Spotfire's Open Chemistry initiative provides products with a single end user analytic application that combines the ability to use standard Oracle cartridges from any vendor with an end user environment that contains the ability to visually analyze and ask continuous "what if" questions of the data. This opens the floodgates to make more chemical data than has been available to researchers across pharmaceutical and chemical R&D companies and makes it easier to distribute and share analytical results among researchers and research departments.

"The leading chemical information software vendors have adopted Oracle cartridge technology as the basis for next generation chemical structure database systems," said Mike Dippolito, president of DeltaSoft. "ChemCart for DecisionSite provides the scientist with powerful access to these sources by combining the dynamic Web-based chemical cartridge front end of DeltaSoft's ChemCart with the data analysis and visualization capabilities of Spotfire DecisionSite."

Data cartridge technology, introduced with Oracle 8 as a way of populating an Oracle database with highly specialized data types that require specific data formatting and retrieval algorithms, is becoming the industry standard in cheminformatics. Previously, the research informatics staff had to build chemistry systems in layers on top of Oracle, necessitating a large, proprietary set of data structures costly and complex to maintain. DeltaSoft's ChemCart technology eases integration with multiple chemical data cartridges, allowing companies to choose the cheminformatics vendor that best meets their technical requirements and eliminating the need to choose only one technology to the exclusion of others.

Spotfire DecisionSite allows product developers, researchers and others to test hypotheses based on hundreds of thousands of data sets from within a dynamic, interactive visual environment. Early adoption in the pharmaceutical, biotech and chemical industries has resulted in more than 10,000 chemists and biologists using Spotfire DecisionSite.

"The introduction of Open Chemistry and Spotfire's partnership with DeltaSoft delivers the first open, configurable application for chemistry that allows companies to exploit the power and economies of scale of using Oracle cartridge technology to manage chemical structure databases," said Joe Donahue, Spotfire vice president life sciences and chemical markets. "Combining DeltaSoft's ChemCart and Spotfire's DecisionSite delivers the first analytical platform with out-of-the-box support for multiple chemical cartridges and an intuitive interface for analysis of chemical information, related biological and physical property information, and information from key external sources."

To learn more about Spotfire's Open Chemistry Solution, tune in for an introductory Web cast on Thursday, Aug. 29 at 10 a.m. EDT - Speed Chemical Lead Identification with Spotfire DecisionSite for Lead Discovery 7.1 and DecisionSite ChemCart. To register, or for additional information, please visit www.spotfire.com/webcasts.> About DeltaSoft

DeltaSoft, Inc provides innovative software solutions for research in the pharmaceutical, chemical, biotech, and agrichemical industries. The company is headquartered in Branchburg, N.J. Additional information can be found at www.deltasoftinc.com.

About Spotfire

Spotfire(R)Inc. provides guided analytic applications and services that empower extended enterprises and their end-users to make faster, more effective decisions. 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 www.spotfire.com.