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Frontline Systems Corporate Backgrounder

Company Overview

Frontline Systems is the leading provider of spreadsheet "solver" software. Frontline's solvers are now included with all three major spreadsheet programs: Microsoft Excel, Lotus 1-2-3 and Corel Quattro Pro. Frontline offers enhanced versions of these solvers directly to end users and application developers in industry and government. And in education, Frontline's solvers -- now featured in at least four leading textbooks -- have become a primary tool for teaching MBA students the methods of management science.

Market Niche

Solvers, or optimizers, are software tools that help users find the best way to allocate scarce resources. The resources may be raw materials, machine time or people time, money, or anything else in limited supply. The "best" or optimal solution may mean maximizing profits, minimizing costs, or achieving the best possible quality. To use a solver, the user must define a model which specifies the resources or inputs; the limits on resource usage, called constraints; and the measure to optimize, called the objective.

Spreadsheet solvers are just one way to create and solve a resource allocation model -- other ways include writing a program in a general purpose language like Visual Basic or C, and writing in a special-purpose modeling language. But as millions of people have learned to build spreadsheet models, spreadsheet solvers have become the preferred way to create optimization models for most common business decisions. (Very large scale models, which can involve literally millions of resource allocation decisions, are usually solved with custom programs on high-powered workstations or supercomputers.)

Products

Frontline's OEM solvers are included with Excel 97, 1-2-3 97 and Quattro Pro 7. These solvers are designed to handle limited-size problems with up to 200 variables (or resource allocation decisions). Many practical problems can be formulated and solved within these limits; but once a successful solver application has been created, users often want to scale up the model to handle problems of much larger size.

To meet the needs of users who outgrow the capabilities of the bundled solvers, Frontline offers several enhanced solver products:

• Premium Solver
• Premium Solver Plus
• Large-Scale LP Solver

The enhanced solver products feature more capacity, much greater speed, and algorithms which yield more accurate answers on larger problems. The Premium Solvers handle problems of up to 800 variables, and the Large-Scale LP Solver handles LP (linear programming) problems of up to about 16,000 variables. Frontline is developing other enhanced solvers for even larger problems and other problem types (for example, large-scale nonlinear programming and integer programming problems).

Competition

Frontline Systems has become dominant in the spreadsheet solver category, having developed the Solver in Excel for Microsoft, and having replaced the solvers developed in-house by Lotus for 1-2-3 and by Borland for Quattro Pro.

On a broader level, Frontline Systems competes with other vendors of modeling and optimization software, outside of spreadsheets. In addition to its spreadsheet solver product line, Frontline sells DLL solvers for use with languages like Visual Basic and C and tools like MS Access, Delphi and PowerBuilder, as well as solvers for the leading special-purpose modeling language, AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language, developed at Bell Laboratories). In fact, Frontline developed the Windows version of AMPL known as AMPL Plus, which is marketed by another firm, Compass Modeling Solutions Inc.

Although spreadsheet solvers are more than ten years old, it is only in the last two years that typical Pentium PCs with 32-bit spreadsheets have become powerful enough to routinely solve industrial-strength problems -- and that spreadsheet solver methods have been emphasized in MBA programs. As more users turn to spreadsheets for their resource allocation decisions, Frontline Systems is prepared to meet their needs.

Company History

Frontline Systems was founded in 1987 by Dan Fylstra, initially with a goal of developing add-ins for the Lotus spreadsheets. In 1989, Frontline introduced What-If Analyst, a goal-seeking product which was the first add-in shipped for Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3 for DOS.

What-If Solver

In 1990, Frontline introduced What-If Solver, an add-in for Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony which was the precursor of the modern spreadsheet solvers. What-If Solver solved both linear and nonlinear problems of up to 40 variables, at speeds much greater than competitors such as the solver in Lotus 1-2-3/G for OS/2, which appeared at about the same time. What-If Solver Version 1.1 won the Editor's Choice in its category in PC Magazine's April 1991 roundup of spreadsheet add-ins. In 1992, Frontline developed the Student Edition of What-If Solver, distributed by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company to colleges and universities for use in MBA programs.

The Excel Solver

The introduction of Lotus's spreadsheet solver in 1-2-3/G motivated the other spreadsheet vendors to develop or acquire solvers of their own. In 1990 -- well before the launch of Windows 3.0 -- Frontline won a competition among third-party solver developers to create a solver on an OEM basis for Microsoft Excel 3.0. In 1991, Windows 3.0 and Excel 3.0 with its new solver were both introduced, beginning a period of rapid adoption and growth for the Microsoft products. Frontline Systems has continued to work with Microsoft on the Excel solver, leading to a new and more powerful solver version which will be introduced with Excel 97, part of the Office 97 Suite.

The Quattro Pro Solver

Borland International originally developed its own linear programming solver, called the Optimizer, for Quattro Pro 2.0 for DOS. But in 1991, Frontline won another OEM-level competition to develop a new solver for Borland, simultaneously for Quattro Pro 3.0 for DOS and for the new Quattro Pro for Windows. This solver appeared in both Quattro Pro versions and replaced the former Borland solver. In the 1992-1993 time frame, Frontline developed enhanced versions of these solvers for Quattro Pro 4.0 for DOS and Quattro Pro 2.0 for Windows. Ownership of Quattro Pro was transferred from Borland to Novell, Inc., which contracted with Frontline to develop further solver enhancements for the next Quattro Pro version. This latest solver is now a part of Quattro Pro 7, marketed by Corel Corp. as part of the WordPerfect 7 Suite.

The Lotus 1-2-3 Solver

Since Frontline Systems' founding as a developer of add-ins for the Lotus spreadsheets, Lotus Development and Frontline have cooperated on a wide range of development efforts and marketing promotions, including short-term promotional bundling of What-If Solver with copies of 1-2-3 Release 2.x and Symphony. But in 1-2-3 for Windows, Lotus carried forward the solver from 1-2-3/G, all the way through 1-2-3 Release 5, the most recent version for 16-bit Windows 3.x. In planning for the new 32-bit 1-2-3 97 Edition, Lotus recognized the merits of Frontline's five-year program of continuous improvement in spreadsheet solver capabilities, and asked Frontline in early 1996 to develop a new and better solver for 1-2-3. The result is the new solver for 1-2-3 97 Edition, which replaces the earlier Lotus-developed solver, and provides capabilities on a par with Frontline's solvers for the latest versions of Excel and Quattro Pro.

Ownership, Management, and Current Strategy

Frontline Systems, Inc. is headquartered in Incline Village, Nevada, on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. The company is managed by Dan Fylstra as president. Dan was involved in the PC industry from its earliest days, as founding Associate Editor of BYTE Magazine in 1975. As co-founder of VisiCorp in 1978, he is well known for his role in the development and marketing of VisiCalc, the original spreadsheet program. Dan has a BSEE in Computer Science from M.I.T. and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Frontline's prime goals at present are (i) to bring awareness of spreadsheet solvers and their capabilities to the large numbers of users who have never explored this powerful tool, and (ii) to help users learn the skills of building optimization models, so they can realize the promise of hard-dollar cost savings and profit improvement for their firms or organizations. Frontline foresees a bright future for spreadsheet solvers and their users.

For More Information Contact:

Frontline Systems Inc.
P.O. Box 4288, Incline Village, NV 89450
Tel: 702-831-0300
FAX: 702-831-0314
Internet: info@frontsys.com

Copyright © 1997 Frontline Systems Inc.
Last modified: June 24, 2004