Visual Analytics Inc. (VAI) announced a landmark event in the analysis of very large sets of information. Using the VisuaLinks link analysis and pattern discovery tool on a Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation PRIMEQUEST 480 high-end server and Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform, Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) and VAI created a fully-realized analysis environment in a matter of days. ViON Corporation provided the server hardware for the environment. In this environment, VisuaLinks visualized and manipulated more than 500 million nodes and links at once -- with extremely fast response times. The data was derived from unclassified, open source data feeds, using a VisuaLinks query service that took less than one second to search and return the 500 million nodes and links from which to expose patterns and relationships of interest to many organizations. These patterns range from very obvious types of connections to hidden, non-obvious relationships that occur at multiple levels of indirection. "The most impressive part of this solution is that 500 million records is really only a starting point for analysis that could be performed in near real-time on data sets that are 20 to 100 times larger," said David O'Connor, CTO of Visual Analytics. "CTC and Visual Analytics believe there is a strong commercial and government market for this type of solution." Gary Zelanko from CTC has been integral in making this happen in a short period of time. VisuaLinks is an enterprise-class analytical solution that is designed to deliver proactive, visual analytics across multiple sources of data while supporting large numbers of users. Utilizing super computing hardware allows users to get their answers back faster than any other solution in the marketplace. Since VisuaLinks addresses the entire analytical process including the query, access, integration, presentation, and reporting of data, the faster the hardware can process the requests made by VisuaLinks, the quicker the decisions can be made regarding the target entities. This can positively impact applications focused on passenger screening, container tracking, money laundering, fraud detection, terrorism, network traffic, and communications such as telephone tolls. The underlying architecture of VisuaLinks is designed as a distributed, multi-tier system that takes advantage of increased processor and memory capabilities as are offered in the PRIMEQUEST 480 Server configuration. Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST servers are among the world's most powerful open systems servers, combining the economy of open-systems standards with the reliability of a mainframe. The systems use high-performance 64-bit Intel Itanium 2 processors, with a Fujitsu-developed chipset. Hitachi's TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform leverages third- generation Universal Star Network crossbar switch architecture providing the industry's highest performing and most scalable storage system by delivering two million I/Os per second.