Optimization supplier to enterprise vendors finds entry to applications business

ILOG, a vendor of rules-management systems and optimization technologies used by enterprise and supply chain vendors, may shortly enter the applications business itself.

ILOG's new product offering, the Optimization Decision Management System (ODMS), has a reporting engine for ILOG optimizations. The vendor's goal is to broaden its target market from operations research specialists to business analysts.

Traditionally, ILOG has been known for two product families: rules-management products, and optimization engines used by highly technical personnel—or embedded in hundreds of third-party products, such as supply chain advanced planning and optimization systems from both SAP and i2 Technologies. By adding a front end to its optimization engine, ILOG risks stepping on the toes of some of its major OEMs.

But ILOG claims its optimizations actually complement those currently embedded.

According to Jeff Kilbreth, ILOG's director of optimization product marketing, i2 and SAP only use part of the capabilities of the engine. He claims their optimizations are focused primarily on discrete manufacturing, where events have precise starts and ends. By contrast, ILOG's ODMS offers nonlinear optimization that would be useful to process manufacturers.

Kilbreth says the new capabilities will supplement—rather than compete with—the optimizations currently embedded in popular supply chain offerings.

In the long run, ILOG plans targeted optimization applications for process and semiconductor manufacturers. ODMS is available now.