Software integrates predictive and predictive analytics, from forecasting and data mining to simulation and risk analysis, and powerful optimization made easy in Excel.
INCLINE VILLAGE, NV – February 23, 2018 – Frontline Systems, developer of the Solver in Microsoft Excel, has released Analytic Solver V2018, its full product line of predictive and prescriptive analytics tools that work in Excel. The new release includes a visual editor for multi-stage “data science workflows” (also called “pipelines”) that may include data sampling, transformations, partitioning, training and evaluating machine learning models, and scoring new data.
“By making it easy to create data science workflows in Excel,” said Daniel Fylstra, Frontline’s President and CEO, “we’ve further lowered the complexity and cost of doing predictive and prescriptive analytics for business analysts who aren’t data scientists.”
Full-Spectrum, Industrial-Strength Advanced Analytics Tools for Excel
Analytic Solver V2018 is the latest generation of Frontline Solvers, which began 26 years ago with the Solver in Excel 3.0, a general-purpose optimization tool that Frontline Systems developed for Microsoft. Today, the Analytic Solver product line spans the desktop and cloud, supports Excel, Tableau and Power BI, and includes comprehensive tools for predictive and prescriptive analytics – from forecasting and data mining to simulation and risk analysis, and conventional and stochastic optimization. Its new data science workflows bring capabilities featured in other “enterprise analytics” tools to every Excel user.
While many vendors have touted the “future benefits” of “analytics maturity” using more-complex and expensive software solutions, Frontline has enabled more than 8,500 organizations, over 25 years, to gain real “business results today” from analytics. And while other vendors have claimed various “limitations” of Excel compared to their own products, Frontline's customers have used Excel to work with 100-million-row datasets from Apache Spark Big Data clusters, and to routinely optimize models with hundreds of thousands or even millions of simultaneous decisions.
Data Science Workflows Created via “Drag and Drop” or Action Recorder
Using the new Workflow tab in Analytic Solver V2018, users can easily create multi-stage “data science workflows” that may include steps such as data sampling, transformations, partitioning, training and evaluating machine learning models, and scoring new data. They can either “drag and drop” icons for each step, connected via arrows on a visual canvas, or they can simply turn on a “recording” feature, carry out each step using Analytic Solver’s existing menu options and dialogs, and the workflow diagram will be created automatically. Each step is linked to an Excel worksheet where results can be inspected.
A single button click is sufficient to re-run the entire workflow on existing data. A new “Map Features” icon allows a user to connect a new dataset to the front of the workflow, mapping the initially-used data (variables or features) to the new data; then the entire workflow, including training and evaluation of machine learning models, can be executed automatically on the new data.
Free 15-Day Trial Available Now at https://www.Solver.com
Analytic Solver V2018 is available now for download from Frontline’s website https://www.solver.com. It is a fully compatible upgrade for users of previous Analytic Solver releases, and supports the latest Excel releases in Office 365, as well as Excel 2016, Excel 2013, Excel 2010 and Excel 2007 for Windows.
Frontline Systems Inc. (https://www.solver.com) is the leader in analytics for spreadsheets and the web, helping managers gain insights and make better decisions for an uncertain future. Its products integrate forecasting and data mining for “predictive analytics,” Monte Carlo simulation and risk analysis, and conventional and stochastic optimization for “prescriptive analytics.” Founded in 1987, Frontline is based in Incline Village, Nevada (775-831-0300).
Excel® and Power BI® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Tableau® is a registered trademark of Tableau Software, Inc. Analytic Solver® and Frontline Solvers® are registered trademarks of Frontline Systems, Inc.