Agilent introduces OpenLAB chromatography data system

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) today introduced Agilent OpenLAB CDS, the next-generation chromatography data system (CDS) of Agilent's market-leading ChemStation and EZChrom Elite CDS platforms. OpenLAB CDS is designed on the modern and fully scalable OpenLAB Shared Services architecture. This provides major feature improvements to current ChemStation and EZChrom Elite platforms.

“Our customers told us they wanted this new functionality without any changes to their existing workflows, and that's what we're delivering. We have engaged a number of customers throughout the design, development and testing phases of OpenLAB CDS.”

OpenLAB CDS is completely backward compatible with ChemStation and EZChrom Elite workflows, while adding a number of major benefits such as central administration, remote viewing and optimized reporting.

"The new system is designed from a customer-centric perspective and dramatically improves productivity and quality across the entire customer organization -- from scientists and system administrators through lab managers and IT executives," said Bruce von Herrmann, vice president and general manager, Agilent Software and Informatics. "Our customers told us they wanted this new functionality without any changes to their existing workflows, and that's what we're delivering. We have engaged a number of customers throughout the design, development and testing phases of OpenLAB CDS."

Agilent OpenLAB CDS supports liquid and gas chromatographs from multiple vendors plus Agilent's market leading LC-MS Single Quad and Capillary Electrophoresis Instrumentation. This gives customers more choice and provides a path for labs that are considering switching from other data systems.

Thanks to OpenLAB's flexible architecture, customers can scale from individual workstations through networked workstations, to enterprise distributed data systems with easy and non-disruptive transitions. This enables customers to adapt to present and future laboratory requirements.

Lab managers will appreciate the central administration of OpenLAB CDS through the intuitive Shared Services Control Panel. The Control Panel provides lab-at-a-glance status with a detailed overview of all the chromatographic instruments connected to the system. Instruments are visible in an intuitive tree view and can be managed in a multilevel hierarchy. Instrument access can be managed through user privileges. In a fully-distributed configuration, managers can access any instrument from anywhere in the network or even get instrument status information remotely from smartphones including the Apple iPhone or iPad.

Lab productivity is greatly enhanced by the new OpenLAB CDS intelligent reporting that enables customers to generate analytical reports in the format and with the results they need. It uses intuitive drag-and-drop template creation and can also automate custom calculations currently being done manually. Reports can be tailored to customers' precise needs. For example, minor component analyses can be simplified as customers can easily generate reports that zoom into specific regions of the chromatogram. OpenLAB CDS can display a chromatogram at full scale and also be scaled to the largest impurity.