Future Point Systems: Visual analytics for critical decision making.

New Release Delivers Advanced Social Network Analysis (SNA) Capabilities, Simplifies Data Import & Export, and Introduces Custom Web Reporting Capabilities

RESTON, VA--(February 17, 2010)--Future Point Systems, a pioneering market leader in Visual Information System (VIS) solutions, today announced the general availability of Starlight VIS™ 4.1.2 and Starlight XEE™ 4.1.2, the next evolution of its award-winning flagship software suite. The new release continues to build upon the success of the Starlight platform, rapidly incorporating user feedback to introduce unprecedented levels of advanced functionality.

In conjunction with this latest software release, Future Point Systems recently demonstrated the new features in version 4.1.2 at the Starlight User Group Meeting in Washington D.C. This conference was an exciting, very well-attended event made up of Starlight users, potential users and partners. Mike Metscher, CEO of Future Point Systems commented, “The conference was a resounding success. Participants had the opportunity to get a sneak peek into version 4.1.2 and also into other future planned development for Starlight. Participants also had the opportunity to ask questions, share ideas, and provide suggestions about what types of capabilities would be valuable to incorporate into the Starlight platform in future releases. It’s this type of valuable user feedback that has fueled the development of many of the latest enhancements to the Starlight product suite.”

“By introducing key new features into Starlight, especially in the emerging domain of Social Network Analysis, this new release of Starlight 4.1.2 further strengthens our position as a leader and driving force in the world of visual analytics,” added Metscher.

About Starlight VIS and Starlight XEE 4.1.2
Enhancements to the new release of the Starlight product suite include:

Robust Social Network Analysis (SNA) Capabilities – With version 4.1.2, Future Point Systems now offers an emerging new class of analytic functionality, known as Social Network Analysis (SNA). Within the Knowledge Manager view, Starlight enables an entire new class of capabilities above and beyond traditional link charting techniques, tools, and visualizations. Link charts built in Starlight can represent people, organizations, events, transactions, communication networks, e-mail chains, technical network topologies and other relationships of interest between objects.

With a single click, numerous features of interest that reside in these link charts can be illustrated. Important to note is that users do not need to create these link charts manually in Starlight, rather, these diagrams can be automatically generated for the user based purely on the information that resides in the data being analyzed. In addition, common functionality such as Copy, Paste, Undo, and Redo are also supported. The SNA analytic capabilities that Starlight features include:

Centrality - Visual display of how central an object is to the network or the level of “betweenness” of relationships in a network.

Path Finding - Visual display of the shortest paths between objects in a network, all paths between the objects in a network, and the number of hops between objects in a network.

Network Annotations – Starlight provides users the ability to color-encode relationships, to add free-text to relationships, and to import custom icons to customize the visualization.

SNA Metrics Export – In addition to visually representing key SNA relationships, Starlight also captures and presents the numerical metrics that correspond to these visualizations. These key metrics can also be exported to third-party tools such as Microsoft Excel.

Advanced, Custom Web Reporting Capabilities – In our previous release, version 4.1.1, we introduced web reporting via Starlight which enabled analysts to export key findings in multiple formats with one click to anyone with access to a web browser. In version 4.1.2, we’ve continued to build on the success of this key capability. In this latest release, we’ve given users the ability to add logo and security banners to customize the report and to indicate who has permission to view the report. In addition, we’ve added an executive summary tab which enables users to include a free-text description to describe their findings, which are supported by the exported, dynamic visualizations and original source data. Finally, this new version of our web reporting functionality includes support for multi-value properties and export of the MetaImage View and Geographic View. With these improvements to Starlight’s web reports, we continue to believe that once a high-value problem has been solved, it’s critical to get that information rapidly into the hands of key decision-makers who can then act on that intelligence.

Simplified Usability and Increased Flexibility – At Future Point Systems, we’re committed to incorporating client feedback, adding key new features while simplifying the overall workflow of the solution. In version 4.1.2, we’ve made the drag & drop import process even more flexible by incorporating customizable entity extraction and enabling users to add their own entity lists and RegEx patterns. We also now support drag-and-drop export out of the Starlight application. Finally, Starlight version 4.1.2 includes MGRS as a native geographic type and incorporates more flexible temporal binning & color encoding into our proprietary visualizations.

Inquiries about licensing Starlight VIS and XEE 4.1.2 may be directed to sales@futurepointsystems.com. For more information about Future Point Systems, please visit us at http://www.futurepointsystems.com.

ABOUT FUTURE POINT SYSTEMS
Headquartered in Reston, VA and with offices in Richland, WA and Mountain View, CA, Future Point Systems was founded in 2006 in partnership with Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL). As a private commercial enterprise, Future Point Systems has been granted exclusive rights to develop and market Starlight VIS (Visual Information System), capitalizing on millions of dollars of government-funded R&D. Starlight enables users to visually manage, understand, and derive new knowledge from massive quantities of heterogeneous and complexly related information. The system is well suited for applications ranging from military and law enforcement to corporate, academic and legal use. Future Point Systems is supported by a network of value added resellers. Please visit www.futurepointsystems.com for more information.

MEDIA CONTACT: Ben Sommers, Vice President Sales & Marketing, Future Point Systems, (650) 931-8660, bsommers@futurepointsystems.com

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Accomplished Entrepreneur With Track Record of Managing High Growth Companies Will Focus on Strengthening Future Point’s Leadership Position in the Emerging Visual Analytics Market

RESTON, VA--(October 15, 2009)-- Future Point Systems, a pioneering market leader in Visual Information System (VIS) solutions, today announced that Mike Metscher, an experienced industry veteran in the world of analytic software solutions, has been appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Future Point Systems.

Metscher is an accomplished engineer, entrepreneur and executive with over 25 years of experience. He comes to Future Point Systems from Overwatch Systems, where he served as Executive Vice President of Tactical Operations. At Overwatch, Metscher was a leading member of the management team that acquired companies and grew the company into a leading provider of multi-source intelligence analysis software tools. These efforts culminated in the successful acquisition of Overwatch by Textron in 2006.

At Future Point Systems, Metscher will take the lead role in helping the company to capitalize on market opportunities in the emerging space of visual analytics, developing client relationships, strategic partnerships, and positioning the company for sustained growth in both the government and commercial sectors.

“Future Point Systems is a leader in visual analytics with a strong track record of successful implementations in the government, military and intelligence sectors,” said Metscher. “The company’s flagship offering, Starlight, has a strong brand and position in the market. There is tremendous opportunity to expand Starlight’s footprint, in both the government and commercial sectors. Starlight’s unique ability to transform mountains of data into actionable intelligence is unlike any competitive offerings in the market today. I’m very excited to join Future Point Systems to drive the next phase of the company’s growth.”

Windspeed Ventures, a venture capital firm based outside of Boston, Massachusetts, has led two rounds of financing for Future Point Systems. “We are extremely pleased to welcome Mike aboard as the new CEO at Future Point Systems,” stated Dan Bathon, General Partner and Chairman at Windspeed Ventures. “Starlight offers the only complete solution to address all phases of the intelligence analysis process, including data processing, visual analysis and reporting. By uniting a compelling, best of breed technology with Mike’s exceptional industry experience and proven leadership, Future Point Systems is well positioned for success.”

Previous to Overwatch Systems, Metscher served as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Austin Info Systems. Austin Info Systems developed intelligence analysis software and communications systems for the Department of Defense. As COO of Austin Info Systems, Mike oversaw the company’s growth to over 250 employees and revenues of $34 million. Austin Info Systems was then sold to a private equity firm, becoming the platform for Overwatch Systems. Prior to joining Austin Info Systems, Mike worked at Electrospace Systems in Richardson, Texas for over ten years and advanced to the position of Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Systems Division Manager. Mike holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech University.

ABOUT FUTURE POINT SYSTEMS
Headquartered in Reston, VA with offices in Mountain View, CA and Richland, WA, Future Point Systems was founded in 2006 in partnership with Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL). As a private commercial enterprise, Future Point Systems has been granted exclusive rights to develop and market Starlight VIS (Visual Information System), capitalizing on millions of dollars of government-funded R&D. Starlight enables users to visually manage, understand, and derive new knowledge from massive quantities of heterogeneous and complexly related information. The system is well suited for applications ranging from military and law enforcement to corporate, academic and legal use. Future Point Systems is supported by a network of value added resellers. Please visit www.futurepointsystems.com for more information.

PRESS CONTACT: Belinda Banks, S&S Public Relations, (609) 750-9110, belinda@sspr.com

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New Release Delivers Advanced Functionality, Simplifies Data Import, Adds “One-Click” Web Reporting Capabilities and Introduces Powerful New Knowledge Manager Tool

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(August 19th, 2009)-- Future Point Systems, a pioneering market leader in Visual Information System (VIS) solutions, today announced the general availability of Starlight VIS™ 4.1.1 and Starlight XEE™ 4.1.1, the next generation of its award-winning flagship software suite. The new release raises the bar for collection, analysis, visual representation and management of massive quantities of heterogeneous, complexly related information to unprecedented levels of advanced functionality.

Starlight Visual Information System™ provides sophisticated data acquisition, information management and analysis capabilities. Starlight XML Engineering Environment™ (XEE) enables the rapid development of custom information retrieval and processing solutions. Together, they retrieve, correlate and synthesize vast amounts of disparate data, automatically discerning non-obvious and hidden connections and relationships. Starlight then visually depicts the data and relationships in meaningful contexts with intuitive, easily interpretable graphical formats or pictures that enable users to discover vital information, rapidly solve problems, and make highly informed decisions in even the most complex and uncertain situations.

“Building upon the valuable feedback we’ve received from our dedicated user community and partners, we made a number of significant enhancements and added new layers of innovation to the Starlight platform,” commented Ben Sommers, Vice President, Sales & Marketing at Future Point Systems. “Our users must keep up with constantly changing information environments and ever increasing amounts of complex data in a vast array of formats from a wide variety of sources. In this release, we focused on adding value with new levels of flexibility, simplifying data import, and dramatically enhancing overall ease of use.”

“By raising the bar to an unprecedented level of advanced functionality, this new release of Starlight 4.1.1 further strengthens our position as a leader and driving force in the world of visual analytics,” added Sommers.

About Starlight VIS and Starlight XEE 4.1.1
Enhancements to the new release of the Starlight product suite include:

Starlight VIS Flexible Architecture – With version 4.1.1, Future Point Systems now offers the flexibility to run Starlight either stand-alone or connected to a Workgroup Server. Starlight VIS includes all the powerful features and functionality users have come to expect from the Starlight platform, but packages these features in a compelling new way. Starlight VIS now enables users to perform tasks with just the single Starlight VIS application, tasks that previously required a Starlight client, Starlight server and the XML Engineering Environment (XEE). Users still have the ability to connect to a Starlight Workgroup Server for advanced data sharing and to build new data processors with XEE, but those extra components are no longer necessary for the typical user. Starlight VIS greatly simplifies the procurement and installation process, while continuing to fulfill the core value proposition of allowing users to seamlessly work with a variety of data types to solve complex problems.

Simplified, Robust Workflow Integration – One of the key differentiators of the Starlight solution is the ability to quickly and easily bring key pieces of data, from disparate sources and of various file types, into a single analytic environment. In Starlight 4.1.1, we have made tremendous strides to natively support most common data types and to greatly simplify the process of importing data directly into the Starlight application. For example, Starlight 4.1.1 now supports one-step import of PDF documents, along with Microsoft Office documents, including Excel, Power Point and Word. By taking advantage of new drag and drop capabilities within Starlight, along with simple copy and paste tools, users can now greatly reduce the time it takes to ingest and set-up data for analysis. This improvement in workflow efficiency enables users to spend more time working with visuals, testing hypotheses, and solving tough problems.

“One-Click” Web Reporting – Once a high-value problem has been solved, it’s important to get that information rapidly into the hands of key decision-makers who can then act on that intelligence. While Starlight seamlessly imports data and provides a compelling, visual-based user interface for analysis, another important new development in version 4.1.1 is the ability to disseminate key analytical findings via the web. Once analysts have employed Starlight’s proprietary visual tools to reach valuable conclusions, they can now export those findings in multiple formats with one click to anyone with access to a web browser. The new Starlight web dashboard enables dynamic reporting of values, metadata, charts, graphs and other visuals. In addition, Starlight now integrates directly with Google Earth to support reporting of people, events, networks and other key relationships in a geospatial context.

Knowledge Manager – The Starlight Knowledge Manager is a valuable new feature that provides a scratch pad for analysts to use in hypothesis testing. The Knowledge Manager offers a basic environment for semantic analysis, automated link charting, and a storage cache for key information or findings during the problem-solving process. The Knowledge Manager allows analysts to make notes and draw connections both manually and automatically as they work.

Inquiries about licensing Starlight VIS and XEE 4.1.1 may be directed to sales@futurepointsystems.com. For more information about Future Point Systems, please visit us at http://www.futurepointsystems.com.

ABOUT FUTURE POINT SYSTEMS
Headquartered in Mountain View, California and with offices in Richland, WA and Washington D.C., Future Point Systems Inc. was founded in 2006 in partnership with Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL). As a private commercial enterprise, Future Point Systems has been granted exclusive rights to develop and market Starlight VIS (Visual Information System), capitalizing on millions of dollars of government-funded R&D. Starlight enables users to visually manage, understand, and derive new knowledge from massive quantities of heterogeneous and complexly related information. The system is well suited for applications ranging from military and law enforcement to corporate, academic and legal use. Future Point Systems is supported by a network of value added resellers. Please visit www.futurepointsystems.com for more information.

PRESS CONTACT: Belinda Banks, S&S Public Relations, (609) 750-9110, belinda@sspr.com

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Groundbreaking Starlight Visual Information System™ from Future Point Systems Offers Exceptional Value for Business, Academic, Military and Law Enforcement Users

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(February 17, 2009)--In the world of information, there aren’t many organizations with greater needs for clarity and insight than U.S. government intelligence agencies. At the cutting edge of research, these groups specialize in bringing meaning to millions of pieces of seemingly disconnected data. Accordingly, their tools are second to none.

After more than ten years of R&D, one of those tools is now available to the public. Future Point Systems, Inc., the market leader in Visual Information Systems (VIS), has licensed the exclusive rights to market Starlight VIS™ to corporations, law enforcement agencies, military organizations and others who have a need to extract new value from very large quantities of heterogeneous data.

“Starlight is unlike anything analysts—commercial or non-commercial—have ever seen. It allows you to apply your natural visual pattern recognition and spatial reasoning skills to extremely large data sources,” said Paul D’Antilio, chief executive officer of Future Point Systems, Inc. “It provides understanding at a speed that is orders of magnitude faster than with conventional tools. What’s more, Starlight can be used on a standard PC equipped with an ordinary Web browser.”

The Starlight system, comprised of the Starlight Server, Starlight Client, and Starlight XML Engineering Environment (XEE), enables users to comprehend information and solve problems by generating pictures of relationships among items in large data repositories. Containing multiple integrated visualization tools, the system can integrate text documents, database records, Web pages, geospatial data, video and photos, and other types of information to create awareness in situations of high complexity or uncertainty.

“Future Point Systems and the Starlight software platform are pioneers in the field of visual analytics,” said Brian Kritzstein of Battelle, a Starlight reseller and services partner that also provides training, integration, and analysis support services for FPS. “Starlight enables dramatic increases in both productivity and efficiency for users faced with massive amounts of information. Starlight enables both government clients and commercial clients to work with their data in entirely new ways, accelerating understanding and improving timely decision-making.”

BROAD USES
Already used by Fortune 500 companies as well as government agencies, Starlight VIS is highly adept at:

• All Source Intelligence Analysis—Starlight enables analysts to work with a virtually unlimited variety of data types to produce more comprehensive reports in less time than through previously existing techniques. Starlight's visual analysis tools enable analysts to quickly organize, summarize, and relate this disparate information in powerful ways, all from within a single integrated analysis environment.
• Legal Analytics—Starlight can process enormous amounts of dissimilar data to quickly locate key items or piece together causal chains, as well as execute eDiscovery, computer forensics, email analytics, compliance, or IP management.
• Market and Competitive Intelligence—With the ability to seamlessly integrate blogs, chat forums, social networks and traditional Web sites, Starlight can unlock significant value from many forms of consumer expression. Starlight creates an entirely new channel through which organizations can gain situational awareness and interact with key stakeholders.
• Cyber-Security and Computer Forensics—Analysts can use Starlight for a vast range of security tasks, from examining a computer system after a break-in or seizure, to sifting through NIDS (Network Intrusion Detection System) data to uncover suspicious connections between machines.

Among the many features at Starlight’s disposal are free-text topic clustering, network analysis, hierarchical organizations, geospatial relationships, temporal relationships category memberships and multi-dimensional correlations of structured data. The software platform also features project collaboration, advanced workflow management and native XML support, as well as an integrated XML data warehouse.

To ensure that data is accessible and in a form that is suitable for analysis, Starlight VIS includes the XML Engineering Environment (XEE) for accessing and enriching data from numerous sources. The modular design of XEE allows it to be easily integrated with legacy databases and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) implementations. It also has a powerful graphical programming interface simple enough for even non-programmers to use.

RESELLER NETWORK
Future Point Systems and Starlight VIS are supported by a network of highly qualified resellers including Battelle, Cormine Intelligent Data, CyTech Services, Microlink LLC, Respond BV, and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). For more information about Starlight, log on to www.futurepointsystems.com.

ABOUT FUTURE POINT SYSTEMS
Headquartered in Mountain View, California and with offices in Richland, WA and Washington DC, Future Point Systems Inc. was founded in 2006 in partnership with Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL). As a private commercial enterprise, Future Point Systems has been granted exclusive rights to develop and market Starlight VIS (Visual Information System), capitalizing on millions of dollars of government-funded R&D. Starlight enables users to visually manage, understand, and derive new knowledge from massive quantities of heterogeneous and complexly related information. The system is well suited for applications ranging from military and law enforcement to corporate, academic and legal use. Future Point Systems is supported by a network of value added resellers. Visit www.futurepointsystems.com.

 

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