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netViz Corporation Announces New Software Tool to Create 3D Models of LANs, WANs and Other Complex Information Systems 3D Functionality represents significant enhancement to company's existing suite of data-visualization tools July 15, 2000, Rockville, MD. netViz Corporation, a pioneer in the field of data-visualization software, has announced its newest product, netViz 3D. The company's existing applications are widely used to graphically depict complex data systems such as WANs, LANs, Telco circuits, workflows and conceptual models. netViz 3D is the first component in the company's new line of software tools that will allow users to model complicated information systems in three dimensions and publish them over the Internet. Taking advantage of OpenGL to generate lifelike views of objects and their interconnections across system levels, netViz 3D can create three-dimensional depictions of even the most complex information networks. The product ships with hundreds of ready-to-use three-dimensional business graphics, including models of computer and network equipment. netViz 3D views can be exported to a variety of file formats including VRML, the standard for creating 3D models that are viewable over the Web. Images can also be saved as bitmap files for use in a variety of graphics applications or exported to the Renderman format, a technology developed by Pixar Studios for rendering images into realistic, lifelike graphics that are suitable for publishing or high-quality presentations. Multi-level netViz projects can also be exported directly into PowerPoint. By incorporating a mix of two-dimensional and three-dimensional netViz diagrams, users can create PowerPoint presentations that navigate across vast hierarchies one diagram at a time or view an entire system in a single, integrated three-dimensional view. Unlike conventional drawing tools, netViz diagrams reflect underlying system information. Whether viewed on the desktop or over the Web, users can select an object in a netViz graphical model and see data associated with the object. If a user connects netViz objects to outside databases, a simple refresh from the netViz toolbar will update the objects' embedded information. According to Vo Tran, netViz Corporation's CEO, supplementing netVIz's traditional 2D diagrams with full-blown three-dimensional data-visualization capabilities meets a real business need. "Until now, 3D has generally been used for video games, movies and high-end engineering applications, but we saw a great opportunity to apply the technology to a real-world business problem. IT professionals are dealing with increasingly complex networks as well as overwhelming amounts of raw data. While spreadsheets and databases are good places to store system information, they're not very useful for presenting it. Networks themselves are multi-dimensional, so it's difficult to represent them effectively in two dimensions on a flat computer screen. The hardest part is meaningfully portraying links and other relationships across large systems. We've worked very hard to depict information networks as they are in the real world – unified systems of interconnected objects. With netViz 3D, a user can simply generate a three-dimensional image of the relevant sections of a network to see components and how they're connected across a building, a campus or a worldwide WAN. netViz 3D lets users uncover information and communicate it faster and more effectively than is possible with flat 2D graphics. Our goal is to eliminate the gulf between information storage and information display, and I think netViz 3D goes a long way toward achieving that goal." Instead of simply adopting conventional 3D user interfaces, the company designed its new product from the ground up to cater to general business users and IT professionals. Says Tran, "we saw 3D as having enormous potential in the business world, but most existing 3D applications require too much processing power and use fairly confusing navigation tools. We took the best aspects of 3D technology and built netViz 3D for the average business user. Rather than just creating flashy graphics, we spent an enormous amount of time developing a simple user interface that focuses on effective presentation of information and easy ways to examine and edit 3D views. Our timing turned out to be pretty good too, because faster CPUs, 3D graphics cards and improved monitors are getting cheaper all the time. This will make hardware considerations less of a factor for businesses looking into implementing netViz 3D." netViz Corporation also announced this week that it will institute a Web–hosting service for easy publishing of data-enriched netViz diagrams. Says Tran, "with a traditional drawing tool, it may suffice to distribute drawings by e-mail. But a typical netViz project contains hundreds of related diagrams and inter-diagram links, as well as a database containing information about the objects and their relationships to one another. Our Web-server software doesn't just publish the diagram graphics; it also makes the entire project database accessible over the Web. In our case, it's a lot easier to just upload the entire project to a secure Website and provide access to colleagues, customers or vendors. Our read-only Web interface is accessible through a browser with no additional software required. Anyone with access to a project's url can see netViz diagrams, navigate hierarchies and examine detailed information about every object and link. We already sell Web-server software that lets users publish netViz diagrams and data, but we've found that a lot of our users don't want to invest the time and money required to set up a server. Our new Web-hosting service will make it incredibly easy to distribute diagrams instantly across the building or around the globe." The company expects to launch the hosting service in Q3. About
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