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The Total Cost of Ownership
There are many different tools in the marketplace that support information sharing, analytics, and visualization. Each one has unique features, functions, and of course, pricing models. For many organizations, the license costs are the primary factor used to determine which product they will procure, which makes good sense when comparing apples-to-apples. However, not all software is created equal, and often, the organization pays a lot more than they expected because they did not factor the total cost of ownership into the decision making process.
The cost of ownership for installing, configuring, deploying, training, and maintaining software needs to be considered, rather than just the basic licensing price when procuring analytical systems. The range of license prices for these types of tools can range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, it is most important to consider the true cost of the system - in terms of the time, effort, labor, and related resources to become operational.
Analysis is a process. In order to derive a tangible and usable result, a series of steps must be taken to expose the patterns of interest. To facilitate the process, the tools must implement the appropriate analytical methodologies. The more integrated the tools, the better the analytical results that can be expected. This is where VisuaLinks and DIG excel over the competition. The design, architecture, and implementation of these tools are based largely on supporting the analytical methodology (intelligence production process).
For example, to visualize data using one particular tool in the marketplace requires that the data be identified through ad-hoc queries, exported from the database to flat-files, and then converted and loaded into the tool. This is an extremely inefficient, time consuming, and error prone process because it puts the burden on the user to manage the data flow. Of course, additional software modules for this tool are available (at premium prices) to help automate some of this process, but it remains very static and not appropriate for large scale analytics. Also, these retrofitted data access modules provide only basic functionality and were not part of the original analytical software design - so they are only loosely integrated. Ask yourself, what does it "truly" cost to implement this type of a solution? And, what is the quality of the results expected from a piecemeal integration?
Continued on VAI News page
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The heat hasn’t slowed us down at all. We’ll be continuing to strengthen and advance our technologies right through the dog days of summer. Our staff remains dedicated to providing the analytical community the tools they need to perform advanced analytics as quickly and efficiently as possible.
We believe that the latest releases of our information sharing and pattern discovery technologies will do more to advanced the efforts of the analytical community than any other products anywhere.
VAI has just released the 3.0 version of Digital Information Gateway, expanding its niche from a simple search and retrieval tool to a full-blown information management solution.
We are continuing work on VisuaLinks 4.0, tweaking, testing, fixing, and documenting to ensure that we are providing the highest level of quality possible.
We are confident that these releases will create the most usable, flexible, and capable analysis environment available anywhere.
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We are in a race to the finish on VisuaLinks version 4.0. This release will provide significant user interface and feature/functionality enhancements. 4.0 has been installed and tested in a number of client environments and has so far been met with very positive feedback.
We just know this release will be the best one yet! Visit the VisuaLinks News page for a glimpse at a few of the new capabilities in this release.
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DIG 3.0 was released in May and is currently available for download! We are very proud of this release and its wide range of new capabilities. Visit the Visual Analytics Support Site to download a trial version or upgrade your 2.0 installation today.
We are already hard at work on additional enhancements. Visit the DIG News page for a sneak at the web version of the DIG Client.
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VAI keeps raising the bar on providing advanced analytical systems as is proven with the recent success of the
FBI’s deployment of VisuaLinks and DIG in the Regional Data Exchange (R-DEx) system.
VAI technologies are recognized as being more effective, faster, and more capable than any competing system. We are expanding our
presence throughout the world – visit the VAI News page to meet some of our new partners and learn how we can help deliver better analysis and information sharing systems.
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Do you have any comments, feedback, or insight you’d like to share with other users? This is the place to do it!
Drop us an e-mail (at newsletter@visualanalytics.com) and see your comments published here in our next issue.
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