Media Contact:
Barbara Reichert
Reichert Communications, LLC
415-248-0230 ext. 7012
barbara@reichertcom.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Franz Inc. and IO Informatics Partner to Deliver
Targeted Semantic Applications

 Partnership Powers Pfizer Pilot and Validates that
Semantic Applications have moved from Visionary to Pragmatic

BIO-IT WORLD CONFERENCE & EXPO - BOSTON – April 20, 2010 — Franz Inc., the leading supplier of Graph Database technology for the Semantic Web and IO Informatics, the leader in Semantic data integration and knowledge management for life sciences and healthcare, today announced a strategic partnership that includes the integration of Franz’s AllegroGraph RDFStore with the IO Informatics’ Sentient software suite. The combination of these technologies creates a Semantic application framework that can be used to quickly develop highly specialized, large-scale applications that leverage the unmatched flexibility only possible with semantic data integration.

“Our partnership with IO Informatics is a leap forward for semantic application development in the life sciences and healthcare industries,” said Jans Aasman, CEO of Franz Inc. “The success of the pilot project at Pfizer validates the potential impact this partnership can have on the entire industry. By combining our technologies, we’ve created a commercial-grade application framework that enables development of large-scale Semantic Web applications with more flexibly than the traditional data warehouse approach.”

The AllegroGraph-Sentient framework allows users to integrate, analyze and use complex data at a fraction of the cost and time typically required.  This greatly reduces the cost and lag-time associated with traditional datamarts and data warehouses.  AllegroGraph provides the scalable storage component for ‘RDF-semantic triples’ and IO Informatics’ Sentient provides the application layer and user interface, for a broad range of users.

“This is a key milestone in moving Semantic technology application development into prime time,” said Robert Stanley, president & CEO, IO Informatics. “This integration allows companies to quickly develop state-of-the-art, ‘fit for purpose’ applications that are both highly specialized and highly flexible – a powerful combination that can dictate industry leadership. We are pleased to be working with Franz, a best-of-breed company who will help us propel semantic application development forward.”

The Pfizer IDEA (Information Dissemination Extraction and Aggregation) pilot represents the unique benefits that can be achieved by using the AllegroGraph-Sentient framework. The IDEA system, which serves as a real-world example of using a semantic application in the pharma industry, is used to integrate data for compound purity verification and drug product stability analysis. The data is stored in various database silos and required a manual verification process that took between two and six weeks.  

For the IDEA system, IO and Franz converted several Pfizer datasets to RDF and then used the Sentient interface and SPARQL queries to find datasets. Pfizer researchers are now able to conduct data verification queries in less than an hour.  Additionally, the system allows researchers to continually add data from many sources over time, which is not possible using traditional warehousing technology. The IDEA project was originally expected to take four to six months to produce results, but by using the AllegroGraph-Sentient framework, it was completed in only six weeks.

About Franz Inc.
Franz's semantic technology solutions help bring Web 3.0 ideas to reality. The company is the leading supplier of commercial, persistent and scalable RDF Graph Database products. AllegroGraph RDFStore is a high-performance database capable of storing and querying billions of RDF statements. The product provides solutions for customers to combine unstructured and structured data using W3C standard RDF for creating new Web 3.0 applications as well as identifying new opportunities for Business Intelligence in the Enterprise.  AllegroGraph’s Activity Recognition package provides a powerful means to aggregate and analyze data about individual and organizational behaviors, preferences, relationships, plus spatial and temporal linkages between individuals and groups. Franz customers include Fortune 500 companies in the government, life sciences and telecommunications industries. For more information, visit franz.com.

About IO Informatics Inc.
IO is at the forefront of the semantic technology wave. The Company provides software and services for uniquely efficient data integration and transformative knowledge applications in life sciences, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical environments. For more information visit: www.io-informatics.com.

All trademarks and registered trademarks in this document are the properties of their respective owners.

###