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To: Carl R. who wrote (50)	4/4/2001 5:15:52 PM
From: Thomas DeGagne	Respond to of 144

IBM adds analysis tool to DB2 Sonia R. Lelii, eWEEK March 22, 2001 3:59 PM ET zdnet.com In a move that helps elevate data analysis into real time, IBM plans to integrate the "scoring service" capability of its Intelligent Miner tool into its DB2 database, giving users quicker access to data that identifies such things as customers' buying habits and credit potential. The Armonk, N.Y., company today announced that, come next Friday, it will offer the scoring service as an extension to DB2. The scoring tool can be used with Oracle Corp.'s database as well. "It runs on an Oracle cartridge," said Janet Perna, IBM's general manager of data management. "There have been a number of data mining products that use this scoring capability. What companies are trying to do is to get a more transaction-oriented relationship with customers. What we are doing is putting scoring services in the database to deliver a more transaction-oriented process." IT managers such as Jan Mrazek, senior manager of business intelligence solutions at the Bank of Montreal, view the announcement as a natural process in the maturing of data mining. Organizations now can build models for customer profiles and execute those models more quickly in production, he said. That means employees have quicker access to the data in the models. "I think this makes perfect sense," said Mrazek, who is based in Toronto. "We were actually waiting for such a solution to come along. The beauty is you can use multiple technologies to build the models but you can still execute the scoring process with one tool like [IBM's] scoring service." Previously, the scoring service was purchased from a separate company or as a separate offering. Now that it's built as a DB2 extender, it works directly from the relational database to speed up the data mining task. IBM is working on extracting other features from Intelligent Miner and offering them as extensions to DB2, officials said. Microsoft Corp. last year built some of its analysis tools into its SQL Server 2000 database, while Oracle plans to incorporate its high-level analysis tools into its forthcoming Oracle 9i database. The move addresses the need by companies to more efficiently use data pulled together through data analysis. For example, the scoring service could enable an insurance salesperson to quickly identify the best policy for customers based on their record. "Now they can score in real time and come back and say, 'You might want to consider an umbrella policy,'" Perna said. DB2 Intelligent Miner Scoring, available for general release on March 30, is priced at $15,000 per processor.