AUTOMOTIVE

"We are helping organizations change how they use data to manage risks, explore new opportunities and make informed decisions," said Kirk Dauksavage, RiverGlass CEO. "We have a unique product that allows our customers to view and manipulate data from a multitude of real-time data streams. The end result is that they are able to make the best decisions possible and to be proactive in dealing with problems because they are better informed; they are basing their decisions on the most up-to-the minute data." A counterterrorism analyst, for example, sifts through massive amounts of data each day, including web-based information, email messages, police reports, travel records, and news wire reports. Using the RiverGlass streaming data mining system, the analyst is able to bring these disparate data streams together in an easy-to-use intelligent desktop, which can then categorize the data, extract content, and find key relationships among data from different sources. New relationships that might've taken months to find can be pinpointed in real time and potential terrorist threats can be thwarted at an early stage. In December 2004, the company secured funding from IllinoisVENTURES, Waypoint Ventures and the Illinois Finance Authority. The new investments are in addition to an early round of funding from IllinoisVENTURES last summer and will allow RiverGlass to further recruit new talent and further develop its streaming data mining products, said Dauksavage, the former vice president for sales of the i-Solutions division of CheckFree Corporation and RiverGlass CEO since April 2004. RiverGlass's technologies are the brainchild of Michael Welge, company founder and chief scientist and head of NCSA's Automated Learning Group. When Welge first decided to develop a commercial version of his group's Data to Knowledge (D2K) tool suite, he turned to the University of Illinois Office of Technology Management, which works with university researchers to commercialize the technologies they develop, and to IllinoisVENTURES, which helps university start-ups secure seed funding and recruit executive talent. Among the markets RiverGlass is targeting are law enforcement, homeland security, financial services, market intelligence and network security. RiverGlass now operates out of two locations: at Enterprise Works, the university's business incubator in Champaign; and in West Chicago at a university-run technology commercialization center. In addition to Dauksavage and Welge, the company recently hired Brian Buck as chief technology officer. Buck was most recently executive vice president and CTO at Trading Technologies, a company that develops high-performance software for brokers and other trading professionals. For more on RiverGlass: www.riverglassinc.com