Minnesota Department of Education Chooses Information Builders to Meet Data Demands of No Child Left Behind Act

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - May 6, 2009) - Information Builders, an independent leader in business intelligence (BI), today announced that the Minnesota Department of Education selected Information Builders technology to build its longitudinal data systems required by The No Child Left Behind Act. The State chose Information Builders after a thorough, competitive search based on its combined BI and extract, transform, and load (ETL) capabilities.

Federal law requires states to implement systems that hold districts and schools accountable for the education of students. These longitudinal data systems publish annual achievement, attendance, and graduation data, along with a full set of demographic data. The goal is to use the data to make decisions for continuous improvements at the local level. The Minnesota education system will manage and analyze its education data, including individual student records, to improve student learning and facilitate research to increase student achievement.

To build its system, the Minnesota Department of Education chose Information Builders WebFOCUS BI tools for publishing and analyzing data in addition to WebFOCUS development tools. It also selected iWay DataMigrator for extracting, transforming, and loading data from the Minnesota Department of Education data warehouse. The total package was supported by Information Builders education and consulting services.

"The challenge for all schools is to gain a better understanding of the data they already have to put it to use in practical ways that help students, teachers, and administrators. For them, like us, it's about serving people better," said Gerald Cohen, CEO of Information Builders. "We help our customers by building our technology for unlimited usage -- for any number of users to access information in a flexible, easy way. We also offer a complete spectrum of capabilities to meet complex demands, such as the longitudinal data system the Minnesota Department of Education is building."

About Minnesota Department of Education

The Minnesota Department of Education strives to be an innovative education agency serving a wide range of customers: approximately 850,000 K-12 students and their families; 118,000 young children participating in a variety of early learning programs including Head Start and ECFE; 82,000 adult learners participating in adult education programs including GED and citizenship programs; 339 school districts; and over 52,000 licensed teachers. The Department's mission is to improve educational achievement by establishing clear standards, measuring performance, assisting educators, and increasing opportunities for lifelong learning. The Minnesota Department of Education is making fundamental changes to close the achievement gap by improving accountability in the education system and raising expectations for students. As a critical part of this effort, it is leading the way in using online technology to share information with parents, students, teachers, and administrators.

About Information Builders

Information Builders' award-winning combination of business intelligence and enterprise integration software has been providing innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers for the past 30 years. WebFOCUS is the world's most widely utilized business intelligence platform. It provides the security, scalability and flexibility needed at every level of global extended enterprises. Its simplicity helps create executive, analytical, and operational applications that reach dozens to millions of users. Information Builders' iWay Software suite provides state of the art, multi-purpose, pre-built integration components that address all SOA, application, data and information management requirements. Its integration adapters have been adopted by the leading software platform providers. Together, these products give Information Builders' customers the ability to grow and innovate according to their needs.

Information Builders' customers include most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,450 people and has more than 350 business partners. More information is available at http://www.informationbuilders.com.

Contact Information: Press Contacts: Kathleen Moran Information Builders (917) 339-6313 Karyn Martin Emerge PR (617) 729-3173