Briefs

Insightful Corporation (NASDAQ: IFUL), a leading provider of software solutions for analysis of numeric and text data, announced today that the company has acquired the copyrights to the software code underlying the "S" language from Lucent Technologies for $ 2 million. The S language is the foundation of S-PLUS, the company's flagship product for statistical data analysis. By acquiring the intellectual rights to the S language, Insightful now has ability to freely move and invest in the future development of the S-PLUS product family.
 
Insightful's acquisition of the S language also comes at a pivotal time for business analytics.  Statistical analysis is playing an increasingly important strategic role in business: companies are looking to move beyond simple reporting, and toward forecasting and predictive analytics. A recent IDC study, The Financial Impact of Business Analytics, quantified the ROI [return on investment] from analytics at an average of 431 percent. The report points out that while it can take more of an initial investment to get advanced analytics up and running (as compared to backward-looking business intelligence reporting) the returns are much higher.

Insightful's more than 6000 customers across financial services, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, telecommunications and manufacturing, rely on Insightful's S-PLUS family to expedite accurate decision-making and improve business performance.  92% of the top 25 ranked companies in The Forbes 500 use Insightful's technology including Time Inc., Pfizer, Merck, Banc One and General Mills.

For more information, visit www.insightful.com