Mac OS X Developer Profile: Numberical Algorithms Group (NAG)

When Rob Meyer, president of the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG), first heard about Mac OS X, he realized that developing a product for the platform could result in a natural expansion of NAG’s market. Rob explains, “We saw the combination of Apple’s user-friendly technology and the powerful Unix core of Mac OS X as being able to provide us with a lot of traction in the scientific and technical computing market. And it turns out we were right.” In August 2002, NAG released the NAGWare f95 Compiler for Mac OS X. And within five months, it became their best-selling compiler product.

“We Can Build a Product for That”

NAG develops an array of math, statistical and data mining components to enable the development of sophisticated analytical applications while saving time, cost, and maintenance for commercial companies, research laboratories and educational institutions.

Attending Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in 2000 was NAG’s first step in learning more about Mac OS X development. “What we saw was very exciting,” Rob says. “As soon as we realized that Mac OS X would have a BSD Unix kernel, we said, “we can build a product for that.”

Rob continues, “We also received a lot of encouragement from Apple, and saw that it would be fairly straightforward to port our product to the OS X platform, even without taking into account our expertise in porting between multiple systems.”

NAG liked the fact that the power of the Unix kernel was combined with a very friendly user front end in the Apple technology. “This allows users to focus their energy on building powerful models and applications, not on the headaches of porting software and other software engineering minutiae,” Rob notes.

Helping Scientists Focus on Results

The NAGWare f95 Compiler for Mac OS X is now NAG’s most popular compiler product, and Rob sees this as part of a trend in scientific and technical computing. “Ten years ago, the norm in scientific and technical computing was to write all of your own code,” Rob says. “Today, people want to use software applications and other tools and to focus on the results they are seeking. They don’t want to be software engineers. Mac OS X is a great platform for them.”

”Apple presents this market with the ideal solution — incredible hardware, very user friendly software, and an operating system powerful enough to do very sophisticated computing,” Rob continues. “It is also price competitive with any Unix or Linux system out there, especially when customers place a high value on their time.”

NAG customers back up this claim. Among those who have purchased NAG’s f95 compiler for Mac OS X include: UCLA, University of Michigan, Motorola, George Mason University, Colorado School of Mines, The National Center for Atmospheric Research, Princeton, Harvard, Rand Corporation, NASA, The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Stanford, Argonne National Labs, San Diego Super Computing Center, and IBM.

Customers are using the compiler to develop applications on Mac OS X for modeling ocean currents, computational physics applications, and simulations of the evolution of the stars, among many others.

Success Spurs More Mac OS X Products

For over thirty years NAG has been developing numerical libraries, compilers and visualization software that longstanding customers such as IBM, PeopleSoft, and Manugistics rely on for the numerical code they embed in their commercial products, but NAG hasn’t had a Mac product for quite some time.

”When we decided to create the NAGWare f95 Compiler for Mac OS X,” says Rob, “it had been ten years since we last introduced a product for the Mac. Our excitement about Mac OS X made us hopeful about the reception it would get from our demanding users. The user reaction was very positive, and both sales-to-date and comments from users have motivated us to build Mac OS X versions of our math and statistical libraries: the NAG C Library, the NAG Fortran Library, and the NAG Fortran 90 Library.”

”These were easy development decisions for us,” Rob explains, “and we were thrilled by the enthusiastic response we received. Mac OS X is becoming the platform of choice for many involved in scientific and technical computing, re-establishing Apple as a platform for ‘serious’ science.”

Marketing Help from the Apple Developer Connection

In the case of each new product, NAG’s relationship with the Apple Developer Connection supports their marketing efforts. Rob explains, “The ADC lists newly-released Mac OS X development products in their bi-weekly email newsletter and we also list our software for free in the Macintosh Products Guide (an online catalog of more than 21,000 products).”

In Rob’s opinion, word of mouth is still the best way to market products in the science and technology market, especially niche products from a small company. Along with ADC News and Macintosh Products Guide exposure, NAG’s appearance at trade shows fueled a successful word of mouth campaign. “With our small size, we can’t do a lot of advertising, so Apple’s help in spreading the word really helped our sales.”

For more information about Numerical Algorithms Group and their products, visit the website at www.nag.com.

“Mac OS X is becoming the platform of choice
for many involved
in scientific and technical computing...”