Visual Numerics Acquired by Rogue Wave

Mergers and acquisitions are back it seems. Visual Numerics has been acquired.( see –

http://www.vni.com/company/press/pressReleases/roguewave.php )

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We did an interview with Visual Numerics recently here-

http://www.decisionstats.com/2009/04/interview-visual-numerics-alicia-mcgreevey/

Rogue Wave Software Acquires Visual Numerics

Creates a leading commercial vendor of cross-platform, embeddable software libraries

BOULDER, Colo., May 5, 2009 – Rogue Wave Software, Inc., a Battery Ventures portfolio company, today announced that it has acquired Visual Numerics, Inc., a privately held advanced analytics software company based in Houston, Texas.

For more than three decades, Visual Numerics has provided numerical analysis and visualization software solutions that help users understand complex data from a variety of sources and build business-critical applications.

The company offers two product lines: the IMSL® Numerical Libraries for powerful mathematical and statistical analysis and the PV-WAVE® visual data analysis development environment.  This acquisition complements the Rogue Wave product families of software development tools, components and frameworks by adding industry-leading advanced data analysis and visualization tools.  According to IDC the market for advanced analytics tools grew 13% in 2007 and usage is expected to become much more pervasive.   

“For the past 38 years Visual Numerics has been a leader in advanced analytics. The addition of their rich suite of numerical libraries and data analysis tools, along with an exceptional team enhances Rogue Wave’s leadership position in software development components and infrastructure,” said Brian Pierce, CEO of Rogue Wave Software, Inc.

The combination of these technologies with Rogue Wave® Hydra and SourcePro® C++products will enable customers to deliver advanced analytics applications in scalable, distributed computing environments.  This will enable high-throughput data analysis using lower cost, power-efficient multi- and many-core hardware.

“We believe that the combination of technologies from these two companies will lead to exciting new application possibilities for our customers,” said Phil Fraher, CEO of Visual Numerics.

The acquisition adds to the list of Rogue Wave’s worldwide clients with a well established business and customer base in North America, Europe and Asia.

Frequently Asked Questions

About Rogue Wave®

Rogue Wave Software, Inc. is a Battery Ventures portfolio company and the leading provider of enterprise class C++ components and infrastructure that enable organizations to build and deploy high performance applications. Only Rogue Wave provides the most complete C++ technology stack including C++ components, UI components, Eclipse-based development, run-time infrastructure, and services. Today, thousands of organizations worldwide have chosen Rogue Wave. For more information go to www.roguewave.com.

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The Rogue Wave name and logo are registered trademarks of Rogue Wave Software, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names mentioned may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

Eclipse is a trademark of the Eclipse Foundation, Inc.

Contact:

Patrick Leonard
Rogue Wave Software
Phone: +1.303.545.3229
E-mail: patrick.leonard@roguewave.com

A Company called Zynga

Here is one of the coolest companies making a buzz right now- it is called Zynga http://www.zynga.com/

They have built some of the top games on Facebook (including a game called Mafia Wars which is sadly so addictive it should be made……).

Gaming communities and discussion boards including at www.travian.com are one of the hottest forums , with steady revenue generation models and quite a lot of nice math and statistics behind the wheels.

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(Psst- if you are present on Facebook please send me a Facebook invite at ajayohri@yahoo.com and we can play Mafia Wars too)

Saving the New York Times from itself

The iconic newspaper New York Times, flagpole for progressive, liberal and communist thinkers (depending on where you stand) is under attack again.

It is under attack from the stupidity of its old school old fashioned presses, who believe cutting thousands of trees every year to make loss making newspapers is better than just putting the News on a Kindle, on an iPhone, on an RSS feed. Apparently online advertising is a difficult topic for the Pulitzer prize winning newspaper to master which has Nobel writers in its hallowed mustachioed and sometimes dowdy columnists.

 

If the NYT just shut down its paper division and shift to a paperless world, it would save lots of money, and earn lot more money from the online world. They can ask their own technology columnists and strategists if this is possible- and ask Google for help. Google with it’s Al Gore links, environmental standing and hunger for more and better online advertising can definitely team up (but for those anti trust worries alas)

So here is a Facebook cause- Save the NYTimes.  You can join up here –

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/170855/8347178

It has 37 members already and I created it some time back in December 2008. If you love newspapers and want the NYT to shape up, then join up.

 

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An open source and better Search Engine

Search Engines are difficult subjects to talk about – there are multiple experts and there are multiple vendors from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Cuil and there are newer innovations like Cosmix -Blended Search and there are Wiki Search (Including the Digg bar and same features introduced in Google now). Content itself has exploded from websites in 1999 to websites, blog posts, RSS feeds, tweets, Facebook profiles, online communities, voice, podcast and video. Quantitative measures to measure, index and rank the new types of content require that the algorithms behind search be made open source but with strict creative commons licensing and using third party developers to create search algorithm extensions.

This idea seems difficulty to implement but it has been there and done before. No one creates Palo Alto like research labs anymore- all scientist and researchers have to first sign away “copy"cat”rights before beginning their research.

The year 2009 is different from the year 1999, and PageRank is no longer a maths based algol- it is a marketing brand. Time for the Stanford dropouts to go back to school and get some more math and some less marketing (and less pranks on Wolfram please) in their search engine. And Paul Allen who created the building in Stanford where the Google algol was first thought, he needs to spend some Bills and venture fund a new wave of innovation in search engines. Is this wishful thinking? Maybe. I just need a better search engine than Google right now.- Perhaps Herr Schmidt take some time from viewing mountains in Mountain View and measure customer satisfaction instead of just measuring market share in non competitive and likely to face anti trust scrutiny in US and Europe very soon. So better give some of the ranking algol features open so all websites implement the SEO tactics magically revealed and create a better world wide web- thus negating the information asymmetry in a closed source search engine.

An E Book Review

Here is a nice e book I got from my colleagues at The Customer Collective. I really really loved the friendly design making this a very easy e-book to read unlike other self help books. It has tips from 11 top sales experts in how to sell in that specific sector during a recession- and these are not essays but nice bullet point specific action items. Hat tip to the editor and the authors here.

You can download the ebook here

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Working Together -Yuuguu

Here is a nice software called Yuuguu. I really liked the software because it enables sharing of screens so we can have secure virtual meetings, it is quite light on processor and memory , and best of all it works across Ubuntu 64 bit, Windows XP, Mac OS .

So if you want to work on a project team that sit across the seven seas and the big pond, and you feel the best way is to talk through a demonstration rather than give  a documentation – then Yuuguu is the right software for you. The worst part of this software — is probably the name. And yes it is free and has a paid version as well.

See www.Yuuguu.com

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