ILOG is the Leader in Optimization

ILOG is the world leader in optimization technology. More than 1,000 universities use ILOG optimization for research and teaching. More than 1,000 commercial customers, including over 160 of the Global 500, use ILOG optimization in some of their most important planning and scheduling applications.

Extraordinary qualifications: Technical excellence Unrivaled expertise Outstanding achievement

Technical excellence
Models and optimization-based applications can't do their jobs without optimization engines. Over 100 software companies embed ILOG's advanced engines. With 75 PhDs on staff, ILOG is an acknowledged expert in the complex mathematics and logic programming that drive optimization:

• Mathematical programming
  Mathematical programming (MP) is a branch of applied mathematics. It finds truly optimal solutions by applying algebra and continuous mathematics to a large search space of potential solutions.
  
  With modern computing power, it is possible to execute millions of calculations and generate thousands of trial solutions on the way to finding the best solution. ILOG CPLEX is the fastest, most powerful and most robust MP engine available.

• Constraint programming
  Constraint programming (CP) is a branch of computer science. It finds feasible solutions when there are too many possible combinations or too many difficult individual constraints and preferences for MP. ILOG's CP engines address the most difficult allocation, scheduling, sequencing and routing problems.

Unrivaled expertise
Leadership in optimization requires more than the world's best engines and tools. In practice, leadership demands a combination of technology and experience:

• Experience supporting modelers
  ILOG supports the largest community of optimization professionals in the world. ILOG CPLEX is now in its seventeenth release. A sponsoring member of INFORMS, ILOG actively participates in the operations research community. We provide technical support in North America, Europe and Asia.

• Experience building optimization applications
  ILOG has helped hundreds of customers build and deploy optimization-based decision support applications. We know how to develop a good model, and how to put it into production. And we know how to develop applications that put the power of optimization into the hands of operations managers, planners and financial analysts.

Outstanding achievement
Since 1987, ILOG has been at the forefront of optimization technology. During that time, our mathematicians and computer scientists have pioneered a string of breakthroughs, earning worldwide recognition.

Breakthroughs include:

• 2007—The first constraint programming solution with support for model and run development is created, making CP as easy to use as MP.

• 2005—The first application-generation tools specifically designed to create powerful optimization model-based decision support applications are developed.

• 2004—ILOG CPLEX founders Bob Bixby and Janet Lowe win the first Impact Award from INFORMS (the United States-based organization for operations research professionals, with over 10,000 members.), honoring their work as developers of ILOG CPLEX.

• 2000—The European Union Research Grant leads to ILOG CP engine extensions for transportation route planning and scheduling.

• 1999—Major advances are made in solving speed for mixed-integer programs (MIP) with ILOG CPLEX 6.5 (MIP forces decisions to be whole numbers). Automated, sequential use of node heuristics, node pre-solve and cutting planes makes most MIP problems solvable without extensive parameter tuning or model reformulation.

• 1998—The first modeling language to support both MP and CP is developed.

• 1996—The first extension of the CP engine to handle complex scheduling with logical and temporal constraints is created.

• 1994-1995—The first MP engine to take advantage of the barrier algorithm is engineered. 1994-1995 also sees the introduction of aggressive pre-solve for problem simplification and parallel computing for high-end performance.

• 1993—The first commercially available CP engine is introduced.

• 1988—ILOG CPLEX 1.0 introduces ILOG's initial breakthrough in MP technology.