[R_haterade]

This appears to do exactly the same thing as Oracle's Crystal Ball add-in: Monte Carlo Simulation for business forecasting.

The only difference I can see is the incorporation of a more sophisticated process for getting estimators.

Can somebody explain to me how this is better than Crystal Ball? Or am I missing the point?

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/bus-int/crystal...

[defen]

My first guess would be that the Oracle product costs "as much as you are possibly capable of paying, provided it's at least 7 figures" and this thing is less than that.

[yura_invrea]

And that as well :).

[beachstartup]

> Can somebody explain to me how this is better than Crystal Ball? Or am I missing the point?

have you ever had to actually pay for or sell an oracle product? or any other high end enterprise product?

usually you can sell 25% (or less) of the function for 10% of the cost. is that "better"? that depends on who's asking.

[yura_invrea]

To the best of my understanding, they just do _Monte Carlo_ simulation. Our plugin, in addition to just simulation, allow you to do proper statistical inference using Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Sequential Monte Carlo, etc. In other words, our plugin allows you not just define a generative model of some (business) process with some assumptions (guesses), but also to incorporate observations (actuals) you already have.