Newly-introduced hardware/software appliance enables professionals to display and manipulate Big Data analytics, 2D/3D images in variety of resolutions, formats; professionals to gain additional insights, discoveries
PHOTO: SAGE running on EVL’s Cyber-Commons tiled display wall. Courtesy of EVL, UIC. (Photo: Lance Long)
CHICAGO, IL, NOVEMBER 5, 2013 – Vadiza, the leading provider of advanced, integrated appliances for visualization and collaboration, and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) today announced they have signed an agreement licensing SAGE™, UIC’s Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment, for commercial sales, development and use on a global basis.
Concurrent with the announcement, Vadiza announced today that effective immediately it is providing software, services, integrated hardware/software appliances and technical support for SAGE users around the world.
The agreement between Vadiza and the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) confirms that SAGE has moved beyond a university-based project with research labs and academic institutions to the boardrooms, meeting rooms, classrooms and offices of Fortune 500 enterprises. Vadiza will provide enterprise-class technical support, a published product roadmap, and commercial features, such as the integration of SAGE with corporate security architectures, connections to cloud storage, system administration upgrades and more.
As a result of the September 2013 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant renewing EVL’s five-year mandate to focus exclusively on leading-edge innovation, the EVL team is turning over the day-to-day support of the global user base and community to Vadiza beginning today.
“Vadiza and EVL have been working together for the past few months to determine the best way to develop and support SAGE as an open source project with a commercial component,” said Jason Leigh, EVL Director. “The SAGE community has been asking us to create and support an enterprise version of SAGE, but we don’t have the resources to support these projects by ourselves. When Vadiza approached us, we decided they were the right partner to take SAGE to the next level.”
Vadiza appliances are a blend of leading-edge hardware and software. Continuing the trend of providing an exceptional experience to users by combining hardware and software into an integrated offering similar to Apple, Oracle and Netezza/IBM, Vadiza makes it easy for subject matter experts like pathologists, chemists, biologist, ophthalmologists, physicists, editors, journalists, cosmologists, and others to select and use large-scale touch enabled visualization and collaboration systems.
The Vadiza appliance is based on Dell’s Precision R7610 rack mount workstation with standard components and the highest available level of processor speed and graphic cards. Vadiza partners with Dell OEM Solutions for manufacturing, global service and support to bring its product to market, and back it with Dell’s ProSupport service warranty.
“Dell is pleased to partner with Vadiza to provide leading edge, integrated visualization and collaboration appliances. When we were briefed on how Vadiza was looking to deliver seamless and reliable appliances, we immediately put the process into motion to ensure that Dell was the premier hardware provider for Vadiza appliances,” commented Ron Pugh, executive director and general manager, Dell OEM Solutions, Americas.
Using SAGE, subject matter experts can now share the experience of watching a surgery firsthand with groups of local and remote colleagues while listening to an expert explaining the procedure, to all the different locations. Also, they can display, manipulate and compare a variety of two-dimensional and/or three-dimensional data-intensive (i.e., big data) information – whether high-resolution images and movies, high-definition video-teleconferencing, presentation slides, documents, spreadsheets and/or laptop screens – in a variety of resolutions and formats, from multiple sources, on one or more tiled LCD display walls. These large walls, approximating or exceeding print resolution, let users see minute detail of visual data while maintaining context over entire data sets, in order to glean new insights and discoveries.
“Calit2 has used SAGE for the past 8 years for a wide range of visualization and collaboration environments,” said Larry Smarr, Executive Director of Calit2. “The Calit2 team is an enthusiastic supporter of Vadiza creating an enterprise version of SAGE and to provide services and appliances to the commercial market. As one of largest users of SAGE, we are also excited about being able to access technical support on a routine and reliable basis,” he noted.
Vadiza has agreed to continue SAGE as an open-source project and will upgrade the current version of SAGE to an enterprise-grade version. Once the upgrade is completed in July of 2014, Vadiza and EVL will make the open source code freely available.
“When IllinoisVentures was introduced to Vadiza and the Vadiza team outlined their vision of taking SAGE to the commercial market on a global basis, we knew that we wanted to support their effort and invest in their future,” said Rob Schultz, Managing Director, IllinoisVentures. “In the past few months, the Vadiza team has accomplished and surpassed all the objectives we have agreed to. The reception from the existing user base and prospects has been gratifying. We are looking forward to great things from the Vadiza team.”
The Vadiza team is attending SC13. Vadiza welcomes all SAGE users, contributors and interested parties to contact them to discuss improvements to SAGE, address any outstanding user needs/requests, and to grow the global community supporting and strengthening SAGE in government, academic and commercial settings in person at SC13. The SC13 SAGE BOF will be held at the Colorado Convention Center, Tuesday, November 19, 12:15PM – 01:15PM, Rooms 501/502.
For more information, contact Vadiza at (855) 344-8400, e-mail info@vadiza.com, or visit www.vadiza.com to learn more about software, appliances and technical support options.
About Vadiza, Inc.
Vadiza is a leading provider of integrated SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment) based appliances for visualization and collaboration. Vadiza collaborates with the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) team at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to create a commercial version of SAGE and to provide support to the global SAGE customer base. Vadiza is committed to the open source heritage of SAGE and to creating a more active community and to connecting all SAGE collaborators. Vadiza is headquartered in Chicago and is funded by IllinoisVentures. Contact Vadiza at (855) 344-8400 or e-mail the Vadiza team at info@vadiza.com or visit www.vadiza.com to learn more.
About the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is an internationally renowned interdisciplinary research laboratory whose mission is to enable scientific and engineering discoveries by designing and developing high-performance visualization, virtual reality, and collaboration systems using global cyberinfrastructure. Established in 1973 as a joint effort of the UIC College of Engineering and School of Art and Design, EVL is the oldest formal collaboration between engineering and art in the U.S. For more information, see: www.evl.uic.edu.
SAGE is a trademark of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.