from DSSResources.comFair Isaac’s Blaze Advisor 6.5 offers greater agility throughout the business rules lifecycleMINNEAPOLIS, MN, April 5, 2007 -- Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE:FIC), the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology, today announced the release and immediate availability of version 6.5 of Blaze Advisor™ business rules management system, a core offering in Fair Isaac’s roster of technologies for Enterprise Decision Management (EDM). Designed to help organizations increase the precision, consistency and agility of their critical, high-volume decisions, Blaze Advisor 6.5 software provides businesses with enhanced support for managing rules and analytics from development through deployment. Industry-leading Blaze Advisor software allows non-programmers to design, deploy, execute and maintain business rules and policies as part of an automated business application. The software incorporates the advanced Rete III inference engine that helps organizations manage large amounts of data and execute rules faster and more efficiently than other rules management systems. Blaze Advisor 6.5 integrates new features to help business users better verify and validate the completeness and consistency of rules across the rules lifecycle, significantly increasing the accuracy and reliability of the inferencing process. According to Stephen D. Hendrick, group vice president for industry analyst firm IDC’s Application Development and Deployment research group, “The business rule management systems market is poised for rapid growth due to the compelling value proposition of inferencing.” While inference engines provide a high level of flexibility, “the reliability of the inferencing process is a function of how complete and consistent the business rules are. Most vendors provide few or no capabilities to verify and validate the completeness, consistency and coherence of the business rules” (“Business Rule Management Systems: Addressing Referential Rule Integrity,” IDC #201262, April 2006). New capabilities include enhanced verification of rules and procedural logic, such as user-defined functions to identify gaps and overlaps. Users also can validate rules through regression testing against expected values. The publication process including these verification and validation steps as well as stakeholders’ approval is managed by Blaze Advisor 6.5 in the new Rules Lifecycle service. Projects can be promoted from development to production according to documented and automated processes. In addition, version 6.5 features tight integration with Model Builder for Predictive Analytics 3.5, Fair Isaac’s software platform for developing and deploying predictive models. The integration allows for greater transparency and enables the swift and flexible movement of models from data analysis into effective decision management via Blaze Advisor’s enhanced Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) import capabilities. PMML is the most widely deployed data-mining standard for describing statistical transformations and predictive models. A scorecard, regression or neural network model built in Model Builder can be directly deployed within Blaze Advisor rules flows without recoding. Any authorized business user can apply analytics as an essential decision element that can be seen, easily modified and combined with other decision elements prior to execution, in a single process. “Blaze Advisor 6.5 integrates innovative and industry-proven capabilities that further improve our clients’ critical, high-volume decisions,” said Carole-Ann Matignon, vice president of Enterprise Decision Management Technologies at Fair Isaac. “From comprehensive support for moving business rules from development to production, to helping businesses manage predictive models as part of their rules repository, this latest version is designed to turn companies into truly agile organizations that can intelligently adapt operational decisions to the ever-changing demands of their business.” Companies in many industries and countries rely on Fair Isaac’s Blaze Advisor to support some of their most complex business applications. The software is the first rules engine to support Java, .NET and COBOL deployment of the same rules. The multi-platform solution supports Web Services and SOA, Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platforms, Microsoft .NET, and COBOL for z/OS mainframes. About Fair Isaac Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE:FIC) makes decisions smarter. The company’s solutions and technologies for Enterprise Decision Management give businesses the power to automate more processes, and apply more intelligence to every customer interaction. Through increasing the precision, consistency and agility of their decisions, Fair Isaac clients worldwide increase sales, build customer value, cut fraud losses, manage credit risk, reduce operational costs, meet changing compliance demands and enter new markets more profitably. Founded in 1956, Fair Isaac powers hundreds of billions of decisions per year in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, retail, consumer branded goods, healthcare and the public sector. Fair Isaac also helps millions of individuals manage their credit health through the www.myfico.com website. Visit Fair Isaac online at www.fairisaac.com/edm. Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Information Except for historical information contained herein, the statements contained in this press release that relate to Fair Isaac, including statements regarding its Blaze Advisor business rules management system, and the benefits to be derived from this offering, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially, including any unforeseen technical difficulties related to the implementation, use and functionality of the offering, the risks that customers will not perceive material benefits from the offering, failure of the product to deliver the expected results, the possibility of errors or defects in the offering, regulatory changes applicable to the use of consumer credit and other data, and other risks described from time to time in Fair Isaac’s SEC reports, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2006, and its quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the period ended December 31, 2006. Forward-looking statements should be considered with caution. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, Fair Isaac’s results could differ materially from Fair Isaac’s expectations in these statements. Fair Isaac disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Fair Isaac and Blaze Advisor are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fair Isaac Corporation, in the United States and/or in other countries. Other product and company names herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Contacts Fair Isaac Corporation, Minneapolis Investors/Analysts: John D. Emerick, Jr., 800-213-5542 investor@fairisaac.com or Media: Angela Carlson, 813-210-5823 acarlson@fairisaac.com |