FICO Xpress Optimization Suite 7.3 Marries Instant Application Development with Seamless Cloud Integration

MINNEAPOLIS—April 16, 2012—FICO (NYSE:FICO), the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology, today announced the latest version of its breakthrough FICO^® Xpress Optimization Suite, which provides massive productivity gains for both operations research teams and business users. The revolutionary new Xpress-Insight component adds rapid application deployment and unique support for cloud-based optimization to FICO Xpress Optimization Suite 7.3, the premier mathematical optimization software for modelling and solving complex, real-world problems. The new release, which will be available later this month, was announced at the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research in Huntington Beach, CA.

Operations Research professionals are familiar with the best-in-class Xpress-Mosel modelling tool, which provides an easy to learn and robust way of defining large-scale optimization models. Models built in Mosel can be dropped into the Xpress-Insight application container, and the adaptive user interface automatically presents the contents of the model in business terms, ready for data exploration, what-if analysis, reporting, scenario management, and custom visualization.

“Turning a model into an application for a business user is normally a custom development effort that takes three months or more — with FICO Xpress 7.3 it can be done in anything from a week to a few hours, depending on the size of the model,” said Oliver Bastert, FICO product manager for optimization tools. “By changing three lines of code in your model, you get an application that enables the business user to ‘talk to’ the model directly. This is out-of-the-box functionality that is very easy to use and highly configurable, which is the standard we’ve set with every release of FICO Xpress.”

FICO Xpress was the first optimization software with 64-bit ultra-large-scale optimization for solving massive problems, and version 7.3 makes it easier than ever to use distributed, cloud-based optimization services to crunch the numbers. With seamless cloud integration, FICO Xpress instantly connects to cloud-based optimization services or internal server farms, in order to execute massively parallel computing.

“The flexibility of FICO Xpress allowed us to launch our new cloud-based optimization solution in record time,” says Dr. Fredrik Ygge, chief scientist at Trade Extensions, a global pioneer in sourcing optimization, which counts several Fortune 10 companies among its clients. “In speeding up particularly hard instances, FICO’s support and the modeling language Xpress-Mosel were crucial to improving our optimization model formulation. We chose FICO Xpress simply because it gives us the ability to solve our toughest problems.”

“Cloud computing is often critical for optimization, since you need to calculate and select from millions of potential alternatives,” said Bastert. “With FICO Xpress 7.3, it’s as simple as logging into your account and specifying how many servers you want to use. Whether you’re solving problems involving Big Data or running through millions of calculations, FICO Xpress enables transparent usage across distributed computing resources, from local machines to cloud-based resources.”

Visualisation of results is a key component of any effective optimization application. Xpress-Insight ships with configurable tabular and charting views for data exploration. Aggregated, filtered data and KPIs can be visualized in a side-by-side comparison of multiple scenarios. The modern, clean presentation layer is extensible, with lightweight custom views based on simple web technology and successfully integrated with web services such as Google Maps. A public API allows advanced users to leverage additional visualisation components.

“Say you want to decide which customers to serve from which facility,” Bastert said. “You start the optimization model and it shows you the routes on Google Maps, with all the zoom, distance calculation and other features. Now you can interactively close or open a facility, restart the optimization, and see the new routes.

“All these new features come with the super-fast optimization solvers. FICO Xpress 7.3 runs twice as fast as the previous version on large linear programming problems and hard mixed-integer programming problems, and the non-linear convergence rate went from 88% to 98%.”

Organizations with large-scale operations, from global banks to professional sports leagues, use the FICO^® Xpress Optimization Suite to ensure that they are making the most efficient and profitable use of resources such as capital, human resources, and technology assets. Financial institutions in particular benefit from the use of FICO Xpress for pricing, portfolio management, trading, and other critical applications. FICO Xpress is also the optimization engine inside FICO solutions such as FICO^® Decision Optimizer and FICO^® Retail Action Manager.

To request a trial version of FICO^® Xpress Optimization Suite 7.3, visit the FICO Decision Management Community.

About FICO
FICO (NYSE:FICO) delivers superior predictive analytics solutions that drive smarter decisions. The company’s groundbreaking use of mathematics to predict consumer behavior has transformed entire industries and revolutionized the way risk is managed and products are marketed. FICO’s innovative solutions include the FICO^® Score — the standard measure of consumer credit risk in the United States — along with industry-leading solutions for managing credit accounts, identifying and minimizing the impact of fraud, and customizing consumer offers with pinpoint accuracy. Most of the world’s top banks, as well as leading insurers, retailers, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies, rely on FICO solutions to accelerate growth, control risk, boost profits and meet regulatory and competitive demands. FICO also helps millions of individuals manage their personal credit health through www.myFICO.com.
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