Landmark OEM agreement with Decisioneering heralds Aries Decision Suite (May 1998)

Decisioneering’s Crystal Ball to serve as core simulation technology for Landmark's new Aries Decision Support Package

Founded in 1986, Denver-based Decisioneering Inc., supplier of an Excel plug-in providing Monte-Carlo risk-analysis and simulation, has signed an OEM agreement with Landmark, to package its Crystal Ball software with Landmark’s upcoming ARIES Decision Suite. Scheduled for imminent release, the ARIES Decision Suite is aimed at oil and gas asset managers and comprises the ARIES Decision Tree and ARIES Simulation. "Crystal Ball technology is a strategic necessity for Landmark as we expand our market share into large, multi-national oil and gas companies," said Landmark’s marketing director Randy Smith.

A single user crystal ball license retails at around $500 and this is a widely used, horizontal software tool. Clients include a dozen major oil companies and Landmark's main competitor, Schlumberger. A demonstration version of the product is available at Decisioneering's website (http://www.decisioneering.com). While Monte-Carlo simulation (whose use in E&P goes back a couple of decades) is not exactly rocket science, the strength of a product such as Crystal Ball is its intuitive use and tight integration with the ubiquitous Excel. Further tight integration with the Aries suite should prove a seductive tool to the E&P planner.