We're thrilled to introduce AnalyticSolver.com, a SaaS (software as a service) Azure-based platform that offers you point-and-click tools to create predictive and prescriptive analytics models yourself, without needing expert data scientists or programmers – yet taking advantage of the full spectrum of analytic methods, from data mining to simulation and optimization.
Though brand-new in its first release, AnalyticSolver.com inherits both the power of our full analytics product line, and ease of use from over 25 years’ experience supporting business analysts using these methods in practice. This is a "watershed moment" for us: We've offered analytic add-ins for Excel Online and Google Sheets for nearly three years, but Frontline now offers full-power predictive and prescriptive analytics in the cloud in a self-contained application.
AnalyticSolver.com delivers an easy-to-use model-building experience for the full spectrum of advanced analytics – data mining, text mining, forecasting, simulation and risk analysis, linear, nonlinear and stochastic optimization – using only a browser. It’s fully compatible with datasets, optimization and simulation models in Excel workbooks, but it doesn’t require Excel desktop, Excel Online or Google Sheets. You can use it to create a single-page web application from an Excel model, without any programming, using our RASON® modeling language and REST API.
On September 1, Frontline is also releasing Analytic Solver Platform V2016-R3, a new version of our analytics software for desktop Excel, to complement AnalyticSolver.com. It features a new "Solver Home" tab on the Ribbon that makes it easy to use the same models across desktop and cloud.
A Cloud-based User Interface Familiar to Business Users
In a web browser, AnalyticSolver.com offers a user interface with a Ribbon and drop-down menu choices, a Task Pane for model analysis and navigation, a spreadsheet-like grid and/or a text editor based on the UI of our desktop software, which has been actively used by over 8,000 organizations, and learned by over 500,000 students. The resemblance is sufficiently close that scores of textbooks that feature screen shots and step-by-step instructions based on Frontline’s desktop software can be used immediately with AnalyticSolver.com. But here's a quick guide to the differences.
Using Data and Models from Desktop and Cloud Sources
Loading data sets, query-based summaries, and representative random samples of data from Excel workbooks, SQL Azure databases, and Apache Spark Big Data clusters is a simple point-and-click operation on AnalyticSolver.com. Not just data, but models in Excel workbook form can be uploaded to, and downloaded from the user’s online account. If you're learning – via our own online courses, or the hundreds of university courses that use Frontline’s analytics software – you can easily choose from a dropdown list of 100 example models and datasets, crafted to illustrate ideas in data mining, forecasting, simulation and risk analysis, linear, nonlinear and stochastic optimization.
Conventional and Stochastic Optimization
AnalyticSolver.com features powerful optimization capabilities, upward compatible from the Excel Solver – including fast linear, quadratic and mixed-integer programming, and conic, nonlinear, non-smooth and global optimization, using a dozen of the world’s best Solver Engines. You can easily incorporate uncertainty – using the tools from Monte Carlo simulation – and solve models using simulation optimization, stochastic programming, and robust optimization.
Monte Carlo Simulation and Risk Analysis
You can build sophisticated Monte Carlo simulation models on AnalyticSolver.com, with a Distribution Wizard, 50 probability distributions including compound distributions and automated distribution fitting, 50 statistics, risk measures and Six Sigma metrics, rank-order correlation and several types of copulas, and rich facilities for multiple parameterized simulations with reports, charts and graphs.
Forecasting, Data Mining and Text Mining
On AnalyticSolver.com, you can explore data using a Chart Wizard, feature selection, principal components, and k-means or hierarchical clustering; create exponential smoothing and ARIMA models for forecasting; perform text mining with latent semantic analysis; apply multiple regression, k-nearest neighbors, and ensembles of regression trees and neural networks for prediction, or discriminant analysis, logistic regression, naïve Bayes, k-nearest neighbors, and ensembles of classification trees and neural nets for classification problems; and use association rules for recommendation applications.
We'll be introducing more user account features of AnalyticSolver.com, to benefit every user of Frontline Solvers desktop software. In the meantime, you can go to AnalyticSolver.com right now and register for a 30-day free trial account! We're excited to see what you can do with AnalyticSolver.com.