LabVantage launches new version of Sapphire software

Sapphire 3.0 brings the virtual laboratory concept to reality for laboratories looking to reach beyond their traditional four walls

LabVantage Solutions, Inc. (Bridgewater, NJ), a leading provider of laboratory information solutions and ASP services, announced today the introduction of Version 3.0 of its LabVantage Sapphire information management software solution.

Sapphire 3.0 will change the way labs are viewed. Historically, laboratories have not been an integral part of the company's technology and business initiatives because of their unique scientific requirements. Sapphire 3.0 changes that. Today's laboratory will now be able to seamlessly reach beyond their four walls and begin to fully leverage intranet and extranet initiatives of the organization. Most importantly, laboratories using Sapphire 3.0 will now be able to rapidly share information with their customers without using cumbersome and outdated modes of communication.

"The announcement of Sapphire 3.0 greatly raises the technology bar for our marketplace," said Jim Aurelio, president, LabVantage Solutions. "Our focus on providing world-class solutions for today's leading laboratories greatly increases our ability to enable our customers to execute their business objectives. The laboratory community is going through dramatic changes, and LabVantage is uniquely positioned to provide cost-effective solutions that address today's technology requirements. Our Sapphire 3.0 solution will facilitate the sharing of critical information from the laboratory to the people outside of the lab who need this information to make timely decisions."

Sapphire 3.0 addresses the pains inherent in changing solutions
Most laboratories have a desire to replace their outdated information management systems with modern ones, but have not made a quick decision because most offerings today are later versions of the client/server system they implemented years ago. The business value justification to make a change has not been evident, especially when considering the internal issues inherent to change. Sapphire 3.0 addresses these key business concerns and drivers. Most importantly, Sapphire provides a clear technology advantage versus outdated, existing solutions.

By specifically addressing the "pain of change," Sapphire 3.0 is able to assist companies in dramatically reducing the two biggest business impediments—re-training personnel and loss of productivity while transitioning to a new solution. Sapphire 3.0 provides fully functioning solutions that can be applied immediately. Most importantly, these fully functioning solutions can be rapidly configured to meet the unique requirements of each laboratory environment. Finally, Sapphire 3.0 embraces eBusiness technology initiatives such as streamlining the supply chain and reducing IT infrastructure costs. Sapphire 3.0 was built for today's forward-looking laboratory.

Sapphire 3.0 is a completely browser-based solution
Sapphire is not "Web-enabled" and does not have a "Web-module" like other laboratory systems claiming that they are pure Internet solutions. Sapphire 3.0 is 100 percent browser-based and does not require any plug-ins or applets to be downloaded—like most client/server applications—to provide browser-based functionality. This is significant for companies looking to lower their IT support costs and reduce their total cost of ownership.

The Finnish Customs Laboratory in Espoo, Finland was looking to update its laboratory software with a solution that fit with their internal solution based on thin clients, i.e. net PCs.

"Sapphire's technology infrastructure mapped directly to our technical requirements for a browser-based solution, without requiring the installation of software on each PC to support the application," said Seppo Lehvanen, director of administration, Finnish Customs Laboratories.

Self-evident interface is a key design principle
The Sapphire 3.0 interface was designed with two key design criteria: first, access to functionality must be self-evident, and second, the user must be able to execute a desired task with a single click. No more than two clicks would be acceptable. LabVantage's mission was to stop the "menu-tree madness" that exists with mature client/server applications.

"By designing an intuitive interface, the time and effort required to train and educate the user community can be reduced," said Jan Schuricht, general manager, Integ Laboratory Solutions, Germany, an authorized LabVantage Business Partner. "The typical pain associated with changing to a new solution will be minimized. The self-evident interface also helps address management's concern that a prolonged period of loss in productivity would hamper the company's ability to achieve its business goals, which is very important for our German LabVantage customers."

Sapphire 3.0 is an excellent solution for existing corporate LANs and WANs Sapphire 3.0's browser-based architecture provides extensive benefits to customers who do not have the desire to access their laboratory data over the Internet. As a result, client-side maintenance costs and concerns—such as software installation, hardware capability, and upgrades—are eliminated since all system information is managed by powerful, scalable server technology. Companies can therefore decide whether the laboratory accesses information via the Web or over a corporate network.

Explosion of CRO Market and Drug Discovery Drive Need for Scalability
The recent growth in business for contract research organizations (CRO) and the Informatics market has forced solutions to meet extremely high levels of scalability and performance. To address this changing business driver, Sapphire 3.0's n-tier architecture now fully leverages transaction server and Web server technologies. The CRO market now requires this level of infrastructure, as they can potentially need to serve thousands of customer requests daily.

"CROs are looking for a solution that can address their functional requirements and are able to seamlessly connect customers securely via the Internet with a robust architectural infrastructure able to scale to meet their growing needs," said Jim Aurelio. "Sapphire 3.0 is the leading solution for CROs that are building world-class virtual laboratories."

The discovery market also drives the need for a robust architecture to accommodate extreme amounts of data. The LabVantage Sapphire product has been able to help a major genomics sequencing operation move from transacting thousands of data points a year to more than 20 million this past year. The upgrade to Sapphire 3.0 will allow the addition of a J2EE transaction server with fault tolerance and load balancing and should help their environment process a significant number of experiments well beyond their achievements of this past year.

Extensive reporting capabilities added
Sapphire 3.0 addresses the reporting pains often encountered by today's client/server solution. Sapphire completely integrates an extensive library of over 75 pre-configured reports to jump-start each organization.

"The reporting in Sapphire 3.0 is rich in content and addresses the many needs of today's laboratory," stated Andrea Holmberg, managing director, SoftwarePoint, Espoo, Finland, an authorized LabVantage Business Partner. "The inclusion of the leading reporting solution for laboratories around the world will be hailed as a major win by today's leading laboratories, since most will not have to learn yet another software reporting product."

Sapphire 3.0 adds major new functionality to an already rich solution. Randy Hice, president of the Laboratory Expertise Center, recently discussed how technology suppliers may be having difficulty adding major new enhancements because, "…some of these products contain immense amounts of intertwined code, and are so architecturally rigid that intertwining new features is nearly impossible from both coding and product workflow perspectives" (Scientific Computing & Instrumentation, June 30, page 8). This perspective begins to shed light on a major competitive advantage that Sapphire has over older, "intertwined" client/server products.

Other Major Features in Sapphire 3.0:

• Stability Module—The new stability module provides the needed functionality to test products/materials over different time period intervals under a variety of storage conditions and test protocols. It is used for shelf life and expiration date testing, to determine the stability of batches and for developing new products. Lastly, it is used to test final products, intermediate products and packaging components for stability and shelf-life tracking.

• Scheduling Module—The new scheduling module helps automate the analysis of samples that are collected on a pre-determined frequency. The scheduler can also accommodate irregular sampling and testing patterns or specific internal, customer, or regulatory requirements. In combination with Sapphire's multi-level specification limits capabilities, labs can execute a series of complex conditional tests and then automatically schedule additional samples or testing based on the results.

Product availability
LabVantage Sapphire 3.0 is expected to begin shipping this spring to new customers and all Sapphire customers under active support agreements. For more information, please contact LabVantage in North America at 1-888-346-5467 or 1-908-707-4100; in EMEA at +44 1494 456 450; in Asia Pacific at 91 33 3573557.

About LabVantage Solutions
LabVantage Solutions, a Chatterjee Group company, is helping to build the virtual laboratory. LabVantage helps customers move beyond the traditional four walls of the laboratory with solutions that enable information sharing. LabVantage has a complete suite of software for high throughput screening, genomics, proteomics and LIMS. LabVantage offers ASP Services and provides industry-specific global solutions for companies in select markets including pharmaceutical research and development, pharmaceutical contract research, food and beverage, oil and gas, process chemicals, forensics and environmental laboratories. The company also offers services that ensure customer success such as industry and technology consulting, implementation services, application training and extensive customer support services. LabVantage has provided laboratory information solutions to nearly 1,000 companies since 1981. For further information about LabVantage Solutions, please visit the company's storefront on Laboratory Network.com.

Certain statements contained in this release may be forward-looking statements and are thus prospective. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

Source: LabVantage Solutions, Inc.