April 14, 1997, Issue: 626
Section: Intranets/Internet
Push Meets Search -- Combined technology to deliver
corporate data to desktops
By Tom Davey
Search engines are being married with push technology to let business
users receive highly filtered and customized information from databases on
a corporate intranet.
Verity Inc., a leader in search technology for WANs and LANs, plans
this quarter to bundle its IntelliServ push product with its Search'97
enterprise search engine. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company touted
heavyweight beta users such as AT&T, MCI, Boeing, and Fidelity last
week at its user conference in Burlingame, Calif.
At least two other vendors, Excalibur Technologies Corp. and Fulcrum
Technologies Inc., have been moving in the same direction. But Verity
appears to have a slight edge. John Beattie, director of Ernst & Young's
program management office in New York, says he's considering using
IntelliServ to set up specifics for searches and push internal
communications to 75,000 desktops worldwide. "It appears to have
strong administration capabilities," he adds.
Beattie says he likes IntelliServ's information-filtering technology because
it can be used by "knowledge managers" within the company. He also
likes the fact that the Verity search engine is already embedded in
numerous databases. But Beattie says he hasn't decided which vendor to
go with. Search'97 with IntelliServ will start at $99 per seat, with volume
discounts available.
Verity has also integrated its search technology into all of Netscape
Communications' server software. Until now, Netscape had incorporated
Verity's engine only in its publishing and enterprise servers. The Netscape
version, however, will not give users the cross-platform support that
comes with Verity's.
Separately, Verity has acquired the Keyview division of FTP Software
Inc. An industry source says Verity hopes Keyview's utilities will allow its
products to more swiftly deliver data from databases. The utilities let users
convert various file formats to HTML so users can read and manipulate
files on the fly. Verity will embed Keyview's technology into its search
engines.
Meanwhile, rival Fulcrum began shipping the beta version of its
Knowledge Network software last month. Know- ledge Network
incorporates many of the features that Verity's product line does;
however, it's embedded in fewer platforms and is designed to give end
users more say in how the information is filtered. The Ottawa company
will begin commercial shipments in May at about $400 per user.
The other Verity rival, Excalibur of Vienna, Va., plans to announce
version 2.1 of its Visual RetrievalWare server this week. Excalibur uses
an application called Profiler to push data to the RetrievalWare interface.
Excalibur's product lets developers build search engines that scan for
images and video as well as text. A development license for 10 users is
$49,000. |
