Information Builders Delivers Support for IBM zIIP Chip

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - August 26, 2009) - Information Builders, an independent leader in business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced support for IBM System z/OS computer Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) in FOCUS 7.6.10 and WebFOCUS 7.7. Information Builders' zIIP chip support represents the first and only BI platform optimized for the popular mainframe environment. Using the IBM authorized and licensed API for zIIPs, IBI will not charge for its software running on zIIP, minimizing the costs of workloads.

The zIIP chip was designed to handle the workloads of Business Intelligence, and other data intensive applications. Specialized mainframe processors like the zIIP allow users to offload work that might otherwise run on the mainframe's general purpose chips.

"By extending support for the IBM zIIP, Information Builders is providing mainframe users a dramatic performance and cost advantage to expand their operations in the zIIP mainframe environment," said Robert Hoey, GM, Major Markets, Systems & Technology Group, IBM. "It represents the latest of many levels of support and interoperability Information Builders offers to IBM customers."

For mainframe operations looking for ways to drive greater value and performance, Information Builders has optimized FOCUS and WebFOCUS for the zIIP environment. The new versions perform the same mission critical tasks and maximize processing power, reduce execution and response time, while delivering consistent application performance and solid customer service. By enabling efficient BI operations on the mainframe, Information Builders gives customers real-time, dynamic reporting, with enough processing power to deliver large 'customer facing' applications, without incurring extra costs for setting up infrastructure or buying new machines or databases.

Leveraging the zIIP, Information Builders helps enhance mainframe operations of FOCUS and WebFOCUS by improving resource optimization to reduce latent workload demand which the Central Processor can now absorb and by stimulating visible performance improvement.

About 80% of the new FOCUS and WebFOCUS processing is zIIP-enabled, including computations, report formatting, aggregation, screening criteria, styling, and transaction processing. Information Builders new BI applications divert as much processing as possible to the zIIP and monitors and adjusts to optimize zIIP utilization. zIIP is accessible to mainframe FOCUS as of release 7.6 available Q3, 2009 and WebFOCUS 7.7, available Q4, 2009.

"Information Builders is dedicated to helping customers enhance value and optimize their BI deployments," said Information Builders founder and CEO Gerald Cohen. "By extending FOCUS and Web FOCUS to support the zIIP chip, we have dramatically recalculated the economics of mainframe business intelligence. Finally, business intelligence applications can leverage the genius of the zIIP environment without compromising accessibility or performance."

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 one of 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. Information Builders also offers solutions in the performance management, business activity monitoring, and enterprise search markets. The company's comprehensive enterprise product offerings 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 Stephanie Fallon Emerge PR (617) 729-3176