Synergos Technologies Inc., which produces population-estimating technology and data, today announced the free release of its in-house demographic reporting system to all current customers. STI: ISIS, a MapInfo-based executive reporting tool, is available as an open source technology and is bundled with over one dozen geographic layers, including street files, water boundaries, and city boundaries. ISIS stands for Interactive Statistical Information System.

“We created STI: ISIS as an in-house reporting system that would allow us to quickly and easily demonstrate STI: PopStats’ data,” says Robert Welch, president of Synergos Technologies. “It allows any user to pull up data on any market within seconds. It’s not designed to replace today’s sophisticated reporting engines, which perform much more complex data analysis calculations.”

“STI: ISIS perfectly meets my need for generating fast and simple maps and reports on the spot, so that I can demonstrate STI: PopStats’ population estimating data to new customers. The system allows me to illustrate the data on a particular county, block group, or zip code in any U.S. market the way business people want to see it,” says Lesley Woodring, executive vice president, Synergos Technologies.

Welch decided to make the system freely available to customers after receiving several requests. “Due to demand, we are now formally rolling out STI: ISIS as an offering to our users. This is the first time that the source code of a demographic reporting system has been made freely available to market researchers.”

Welch says there are two scenarios in which STI: ISIS would be particularly valuable. One is for smaller companies that cannot afford full-featured reporting engines but who need answers to simple demographic questions. The other is for larger companies who want to build their own in-house systems. “Instead of starting from scratch, they can use STI: ISIS’s open source technology as the foundation,” he says. “But also, any executive can use the tool to create quick maps and reports on the fly.”

Kyle Kretsinger agrees. As the director of research for Weingarten Realty in Houston, he has been using STI: ISIS for a couple of years. “It might only have 20 percent of the functionality of more robust reporting systems, but it’s the perfect 20 percent, because it provides 80 percent of my demographic reporting needs.”

STI: ISIS’s system requirements include Windows XP and MapInfo Professional (version 7.0 minimum). Technical support for STI: ISIS is available through ROIC Analytics on a fee-based service.