Panopticon Software
Encyclopedia
Panopticon Software is a multi-national Data Visualization
software company specializing in monitoring and analysis of real-time data
. The firm is headquartered in Stockholm
, Sweden
, with additional offices in New York City
, London
, Boston
and partner agreements for other markets around the world. The company's name is derived from the Greek: 'pan' for all, 'optic' for sight.
Panopticon Software is a key player in the data visualization
sector along with for example Qliktech
, Tableau Software
and Spotfire
. Its Swedish origins are shared with GapMinder, Qliktech and Spotfire, making Sweden a centre for Information Visualization
research and development.
It has historically specialised in selling Treemapping
and Heatmap visualisation software and development tools to clients within the financial services
and telecommunications industries. It uses a variety of other visual analysis tools in its products, including Scatter Plots, Dot Plots
, Pie Charts
, Line Graphs
, and Bullet Graph
visualizations. The company's products are sometimes deployed as Executive Dashboards that allow managers to interact, explore, monitor and analyze rapidly-changing and/or large data sets. Panopticon tools are also often embedded in other enterprise applications using the company's SDK which is available for Java
, Microsoft
.NET
and the Windows Presentation Foundation
. The Panopticon products are optimized for use with real-time data
sources, CEP
engines and relational databases. and is a regular exhibitor at financial industry events such as SIFMA, and SIA.
In March 2007 its competitor Spotfire
undertook negotiations with Hamsard Group, to take full owership of Panopticon. This potential deal was not completed, Spotfire pulling out of negotiations, and itself subsequently being purchased by Tibco. In May 2007 the company was sold back to its founders as part of a management buyout.
In December 2007 the company elected a new board, including Carl Palmstierna, a former partner with Goldman Sachs
and John Wattin, previously Chairman of MySQL AB
.
In December 2007, the company appointed Peter Simpson as Senior Vice President of Research and Development. Peter had previously held senior positions with Instant Information and HSBC
.
In May 2009 the company appointed Chris Elsmore as SVP Partners and Channels Worldwide. Chris had previously been in charge of SAP/Business Object
's partner program.
to enhance comprehension of large multi-element datasets in less than 250 milliseconds.
Pre-Attentive Processing is a term from the area of human cognitive psychology and refers to the ability of the low-level human visual system to rapidly identify certain basic visual properties. Examples of visual features that can be detected in this way include hue, intensity, enclosure, orientation, size, and motion.
s which are displayed through a series of visualizations including treemaps. This allows the user to load data, select variables and hierarchical structures, and navigate through the resultant visualization, filtering, zooming and drilling (sometimes called slicing and dicing), to identify outliers, correlations and trends.
Its streaming OLAP
implementation takes an in-memory OLAP
cube and allows data to be streamed through it. This combination makes the company's products attractive to industry verticals that require live streaming data, such as financial market data
utility grid
monitoring and telecommunications network traffic analysis
. This is very different than the vast majority of OLAP implementations in which cubes are rebuilt periodically for new batches of data.
This support for streaming data with its products has allowed financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup
, and Fortis (finance)
to implement the Panopticon Products within their real-time trading and risk applications.
Euromoney has stated that it provides the trader community with a way of quickly digesting information.
s in Java language, .NET Framework
and Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation
.
Both products support a number of different data visualizations including:
to develop visual monitoring and analysis systems incorporating the Sybase Aleri CEP engine.
Its technology is also embedded in several other firms' product offerings including:
Reuters
,
Deltek
, an enterprise project management solution provider, Advent Software
, a financial services solution provider, Kynetix, a solutions provider to asset managers and hedge fund operators, TBricks, an algorithmic trading
solutions provider and Polystar, a telecoms solutions provider. Its reseller partners include Bishopsgate Financial, EAE, EmblocSoft, C O M E Computer Systeme GmbH, and Technologies & Finance.
Data visualization
Data visualization is the study of the visual representation of data, meaning "information that has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information"....
software company specializing in monitoring and analysis of real-time data
Real-time data
Real-time data denotes information that is delivered immediately after collection. There is no delay in the timeliness of the information provided. Real-time data is often used for navigation or tracking....
. The firm is headquartered in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, with additional offices in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
and partner agreements for other markets around the world. The company's name is derived from the Greek: 'pan' for all, 'optic' for sight.
Panopticon Software is a key player in the data visualization
Data visualization
Data visualization is the study of the visual representation of data, meaning "information that has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information"....
sector along with for example Qliktech
Qliktech
QlikTech is a business intelligence software company based in Radnor, Pennsylvania. QlikTech is the provider of QlikView, a business intelligence solution that delivers enterprise-class analytics and search. Its in-memory associative search technology makes calculations in real-time, enabling...
, Tableau Software
Tableau Software
Tableau Software is an American computer software company headquartered in Seattle, WA, USA. It produces a family of interactive data visualization products focused on business intelligence, and is reportedly anticipating revenue of $30 million to $40 million in 2010.- History :The company traces...
and Spotfire
Spotfire
Spotfire was a business intelligence company based in Somerville, Massachusetts. It was bought by TIBCO in 2007.-History:Spotfire's origins trace back to the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park where, in the early 1990s, Christopher Ahlberg, a visiting...
. Its Swedish origins are shared with GapMinder, Qliktech and Spotfire, making Sweden a centre for Information Visualization
Information visualization
Information visualization is the interdisciplinary study of "the visual representation of large-scale collections of non-numerical information, such as files and lines of code in software systems, library and bibliographic databases, networks of relations on the internet, and so forth".- Overview...
research and development.
It has historically specialised in selling Treemapping
Treemapping
In information visualization and computing, treemapping is a method for displaying hierarchical data by using nested rectangles.- Main idea :...
and Heatmap visualisation software and development tools to clients within the financial services
Financial services
Financial services refer to services provided by the finance industry. The finance industry encompasses a broad range of organizations that deal with the management of money. Among these organizations are credit unions, banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, consumer finance companies,...
and telecommunications industries. It uses a variety of other visual analysis tools in its products, including Scatter Plots, Dot Plots
Dot plot (statistics)
A dot chart or dot plot is a statistical chart consisting of data points plotted on a simple scale, typically using filled in circles. There are two common, yet very different, versions of the dot chart. The first is described by Wilkinson as a graph that has been used in hand-drawn graphs to...
, Pie Charts
Pie chart
A pie chart is a circular chart divided into sectors, illustrating proportion. In a pie chart, the arc length of each sector , is proportional to the quantity it represents. When angles are measured with 1 turn as unit then a number of percent is identified with the same number of centiturns...
, Line Graphs
Line graph
In graph theory, the line graph L of undirected graph G is another graph L that represents the adjacencies between edges of G...
, and Bullet Graph
Bullet graph
A bullet graph is a variation of a bar graph developed by Stephen Few. Seemingly inspired by the traditional thermometer charts and progress bars found in many dashboards, the bullet graph serves as a replacement for dashboard gauges and meters...
visualizations. The company's products are sometimes deployed as Executive Dashboards that allow managers to interact, explore, monitor and analyze rapidly-changing and/or large data sets. Panopticon tools are also often embedded in other enterprise applications using the company's SDK which is available for Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
.NET
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
and the Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation
Developed by Microsoft, the Windows Presentation Foundation is a computer-software graphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initially released as part of .NET Framework 3.0. Rather than relying on the older GDI...
. The Panopticon products are optimized for use with real-time data
Real-time data
Real-time data denotes information that is delivered immediately after collection. There is no delay in the timeliness of the information provided. Real-time data is often used for navigation or tracking....
sources, CEP
Complex Event Processing
Complex event processing consists of processing many events happening across all the layers of an organization, identifying the most meaningful events within the event cloud, analyzing their impact, and taking subsequent action in real time....
engines and relational databases. and is a regular exhibitor at financial industry events such as SIFMA, and SIA.
History
The company was founded in 1999 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Emerging Markets brokerage named Brunswick Direct before being spun off as a separate entity in 2002. It later was acquired by the UK based Hamsard Group (Hamsard is now known as Cantono Plc), and became a subsidiary of the Group.In March 2007 its competitor Spotfire
Spotfire
Spotfire was a business intelligence company based in Somerville, Massachusetts. It was bought by TIBCO in 2007.-History:Spotfire's origins trace back to the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park where, in the early 1990s, Christopher Ahlberg, a visiting...
undertook negotiations with Hamsard Group, to take full owership of Panopticon. This potential deal was not completed, Spotfire pulling out of negotiations, and itself subsequently being purchased by Tibco. In May 2007 the company was sold back to its founders as part of a management buyout.
In December 2007 the company elected a new board, including Carl Palmstierna, a former partner with Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients...
and John Wattin, previously Chairman of MySQL AB
MySQL AB
MySQL AB was a software company. MySQL AB is the creator of MySQL, a relational database management system, as well as related products such as MySQL Cluster...
.
In December 2007, the company appointed Peter Simpson as Senior Vice President of Research and Development. Peter had previously held senior positions with Instant Information and HSBC
HSBC
HSBC Holdings plc is a global banking and financial services company headquartered in Canary Wharf, London, United Kingdom. it is the world's second-largest banking and financial services group and second-largest public company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine...
.
In May 2009 the company appointed Chris Elsmore as SVP Partners and Channels Worldwide. Chris had previously been in charge of SAP/Business Object
Business Objects (company)
SAP Business Objects is a French enterprise software company, specializing in business intelligence . Since 2007, it has been a part of SAP AG. The company claimed more than 46,000 customers worldwide in its final earnings release...
's partner program.
Pre-attentive processing
The visualizations that Panopticon offers within its products attempt to utilize the human capacity for Visual Search and Pre-Attentive ProcessingVisual search
Visual search is a type of perceptual task requiring attention that typically involves an active scan of the visual environment for a particular object or feature among other objects or features . Visual search can take place either with or without eye movements...
to enhance comprehension of large multi-element datasets in less than 250 milliseconds.
Pre-Attentive Processing is a term from the area of human cognitive psychology and refers to the ability of the low-level human visual system to rapidly identify certain basic visual properties. Examples of visual features that can be detected in this way include hue, intensity, enclosure, orientation, size, and motion.
Technology overview
Panopticon's technology relies on in-memory OLAP cubeOLAP cube
An OLAP cube is a data structure that allows fast analysis of data. It can also be defined as the capability of manipulating and analyzing data from multiple perspectives...
s which are displayed through a series of visualizations including treemaps. This allows the user to load data, select variables and hierarchical structures, and navigate through the resultant visualization, filtering, zooming and drilling (sometimes called slicing and dicing), to identify outliers, correlations and trends.
Its streaming OLAP
OLAP
In computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP , is an approach to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational reporting and data mining...
implementation takes an in-memory OLAP
OLAP
In computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP , is an approach to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational reporting and data mining...
cube and allows data to be streamed through it. This combination makes the company's products attractive to industry verticals that require live streaming data, such as financial market data
Market data
In finance, market data is quote and trade-related data associated with equity, fixed-income, financial derivatives, currency, and other investment instruments. Market data is numerical price data, reported from trading venues, such as stock exchanges...
utility grid
Electric power transmission
Electric-power transmission is the bulk transfer of electrical energy, from generating power plants to Electrical substations located near demand centers...
monitoring and telecommunications network traffic analysis
Network traffic measurement
In computer networks, network traffic measurement is the process of measuring the amount and type of traffic on a particular network. This is especially important with regard to effective bandwidth management.- Tools :...
. This is very different than the vast majority of OLAP implementations in which cubes are rebuilt periodically for new batches of data.
This support for streaming data with its products has allowed financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup
Citigroup
Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Citigroup was formed from one of the world's largest mergers in history by combining the banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate...
, and Fortis (finance)
Fortis (finance)
Fortis N.V./S.A. was a company active in insurance, banking and investment management. In 2007 it was the 20th largest business in the world by revenue but after encountering severe problems in the financial crisis of 2008, most of the company was sold in parts, with only insurance activities...
to implement the Panopticon Products within their real-time trading and risk applications.
Euromoney has stated that it provides the trader community with a way of quickly digesting information.
Product overview
Panopticon has two platform independent product lines. Its enterprise application and SDKSoftware development kit
A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...
s in Java language, .NET Framework
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
and Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation
Developed by Microsoft, the Windows Presentation Foundation is a computer-software graphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initially released as part of .NET Framework 3.0. Rather than relying on the older GDI...
.
- Panopticon EX Enterprise Application with streaming connectivity to Microsoft ExcelMicrosoft ExcelMicrosoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
, Sonic MQ, and Complex Event Processing (CEP)Complex Event ProcessingComplex event processing consists of processing many events happening across all the layers of an organization, identifying the most meaningful events within the event cloud, analyzing their impact, and taking subsequent action in real time....
engines. and with static connectivity to relational databases such as OracleOracle databaseThe Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....
, IBM DB2IBM DB2The IBM DB2 Enterprise Server Edition is a relational model database server developed by IBM. It primarily runs on Unix , Linux, IBM i , z/OS and Windows servers. DB2 also powers the different IBM InfoSphere Warehouse editions...
, Microsoft SQL ServerMicrosoft SQL ServerMicrosoft SQL Server is a relational database server, developed by Microsoft: It is a software product whose primary function is to store and retrieve data as requested by other software applications, be it those on the same computer or those running on another computer across a network...
, and MySQLMySQLMySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
.
- Panopticon Developer .NET, WPF and Java.
Both products support a number of different data visualizations including:
- Treemap
- Heatmap
- Heat Matrix
- Stack Graph (effectively shows Treemaps across time for time series data sets)
- Bar Graph
- Horizon Graph (Specialized data visualization for Time Series data sets in limited vertical space)
- Scatter Plot
- Line GraphsLine graphIn graph theory, the line graph L of undirected graph G is another graph L that represents the adjacencies between edges of G...
- Dot PlotsDot plot (statistics)A dot chart or dot plot is a statistical chart consisting of data points plotted on a simple scale, typically using filled in circles. There are two common, yet very different, versions of the dot chart. The first is described by Wilkinson as a graph that has been used in hand-drawn graphs to...
- Bullet GraphBullet graphA bullet graph is a variation of a bar graph developed by Stephen Few. Seemingly inspired by the traditional thermometer charts and progress bars found in many dashboards, the bullet graph serves as a replacement for dashboard gauges and meters...
Awards
Its technology when adopted by financial institutions has led to recognition from financial industry periodicals such as:- The Banker (Bear Stearns, Citi)
- Euromoney (JP Morgan Chase, UBS).
Joint ventures and strategic alliances
Panopticon has a strategic partnership with SybaseSybase
Sybase, an SAP company, is an enterprise software and services company offering software to manage, analyze, and mobilize information, using relational databases, analytics and data warehousing solutions and mobile applications development platforms....
to develop visual monitoring and analysis systems incorporating the Sybase Aleri CEP engine.
Its technology is also embedded in several other firms' product offerings including:
Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
,
Deltek
Deltek
Deltek, Inc. is a software company that specializes in accounting and related software programs to be used by government contractors and similar businesses.-History:The company was founded as Deltek Systems, Inc...
, an enterprise project management solution provider, Advent Software
Advent Software
Advent Software is a software company that makes software designed to automate portfolio accounting for investment management firms, ranging from family offices and investment advisors to large institutional investors and hedge funds. The company has customers in 60 countries that manage some $14...
, a financial services solution provider, Kynetix, a solutions provider to asset managers and hedge fund operators, TBricks, an algorithmic trading
Algorithmic trading
In electronic financial markets, algorithmic trading or automated trading, also known as algo trading, black-box trading or robo trading, is the use of electronic platforms for entering trading orders with an algorithm deciding on aspects of the order such as the timing, price, or quantity of the...
solutions provider and Polystar, a telecoms solutions provider. Its reseller partners include Bishopsgate Financial, EAE, EmblocSoft, C O M E Computer Systeme GmbH, and Technologies & Finance.