February 6, 2004

Barra Chooses Advanced Visual Systems to Add Data Visualization into New Credit Risk Management Solution

(Waltham, Mass. - Feb. 9, 2004) - Advanced Visual Systems (AVS) today announced that Barra, a global leader in risk management technology for investment professionals, has selected its OpenViz data visualization technology to add dynamic displays of risk and market performance to its recently announced credit risk offering, Barra Credit.

OpenViz data visualization techniques from AVS will provide Barra users with a graphically rich and highly interactive experience as they take advantage of the extensive analytic capabilities offered in Barra Credit.

"Barra Credit is designed to deliver thousands of data points across multiple markets, and therefore, we required an intuitive graphical interface," said Tim Backshall, director of global credit market strategy. "In our survey of vendors, it was clear that AVS had superior graphical capabilities and experienced professional consulting - enabling quick integration and deployment with our product."

OpenViz is a comprehensive system for visualizing all types of corporate content as fully interactive graphics that simplify the process of reporting and understanding business and financial data. A wide range of visualization, analytic, deployment, and data management options enable application designers and product managers at software companies, such as Barra, to create highly branded, end-user empowering applications.

According to Steve Sukman, president of Business Software at AVS, Barra's use of our OpenViz technology represents ground-breaking innovation in the risk management space. Barra Credit pushes interactive data visualization to new dimensions in user experience and represents one of the most compelling implementations of our OpenViz technology to date. We are extremely honored to provide the graphics technology that powers this innovative new direction in risk management and market performance measurement.