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It has been almost ten years since the release of Windows 95. Hidden in Windows 95 was a library containing functionality never before seen on the desktop - Open GL. Open GL, a standards-based enabling technology, made creating interactive 3-D graphics faster, easier and more dependable than before. Now, 10 years later, where have these 3-D graphics gone to provide business advantage to those working with data? Instead of the virtual reality interfaces postulated in 1992, interactive desktop 3-D has become much more effective at solving specific business needs in monitoring, analysis and reporting and is now broadly referred to as information visualization and visual analytics. Business systems are generating ever-increasing amounts of data, and more and more of this data is moving in real time. Data mining is a standard feature in some databases. Automatic analytic modeling engines are found in many applications. However, there remain many applications where human judgment is required, including: management reporting, risk management, model exploration and validation, real-time operations and information security. With all this rich information, the challenge remains to derive the most business value from the ever- increasing amount of available information.
Visual information can significantly improve productivity. Users can explore large amounts of data, rapidly assimilate information from many sources, reason with it, understand it and create new knowledge based on it. With the right visual picture, people can make better decisions, faster, backed with more information.
The last ten years has witnessed an explosion of graphics in reporting and analysis software - dashboards, scorecarding and rich charting techniques - which have significantly enhanced information presentation. Interactive features, such as linking and drill- through, are becoming commonplace. Visual techniques using maps, gauges, stoplights, radar charts are now widely available for reporting applications. Techniques such as zooming and integrated correlations (where all charts are synchronized so that selecting one bar in a chart updates all active charts to highlight the selected subset) are becoming more widespread. This first generation of visualization has familiarized the corporate world with using and interacting with business graphics. Now, some corporations are looking to harness visualization for strategic advantages in their core competencies, adding advanced visualization to key monitoring, analysis and client-facing processes.
Monitoring
One of the most obvious benefits of...