FAST Introduces Full-Featured OEM Enterprise Search Solution
Oslo, Norway (ots/PRNewswire)
- FAST InStream Enables ISVs to Differentiate Their Market Offering, Generate New Revenue Opportunities and to Provide Best-In-Class Search Experiences for End-Users
Fast Search & Transfer(TM) (FAST(TM)), the leading developer of enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies, today announced FAST InStream(TM), an OEM enterprise search solution developed specifically for independent software vendors (ISVs). Based upon FAST's powerful Enterprise Search Platform (FAST ESP(TM)), FAST InStream enables ISVs to empower their users, extend and strengthen their applications' functionality, and accelerate their competitive advantage.
FAST InStream is designed to increase the value of enterprise applications and boost ROI for the ISV's customers by extending the power of FAST ESP within OEM environments. Supporting both structured and unstructured data, FAST InStream provides unique value across all types of software applications, including:
- Enterprise Portals
- Content and Document Management systems
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions
- Business Intelligence (BI) suites and applications
- Storage and Archiving solutions.
For content- and information-intensive application environments such as these, FAST InStream is an ideal fit based on a combination of best-in-class scalability, market-leading relevancy, and a completely modular and flexible architecture which allows ISVs to easily integrate only the components that they require.
The unmatched scalability and performance of the product provides ISVs the ability to handle tens of millions of documents (or data records) and hundreds of queries per second per commodity server, creating a very low total cost of ownership (TCO). Furthermore, FAST InStream provides high quality information retrieval and on-the-fly analytics - both statistical and linguistic - for effective search querying, as well as for specialized search and alerting functionalities.
"FAST's accelerating growth in the alliances sector has been driven by our focus on creating an embeddable solution that focuses on the needs of our partners. The introduction of FAST InStream supports our strategic direction to deliver innovative search solutions through an extended network of partners," said Ali Riaz, FAST's chief operating officer. "As other vendors realign their enterprise search business models and expand product portfolios away from search, they inherently create channel conflict with key OEM customers. In contrast, FAST InStream and the FAST Channels infrastructure have been developed specifically to meet the unique technical and support requirements of ISVs."
FAST's open and modular architecture provides ISVs the utmost flexibility when selecting and deploying search solutions - from specialized search and alerting applications to complete multilingual enterprise search platforms which support 77 languages. FAST InStream has been designed to support OEM readiness through characteristics such as:
- Simple integration with a broad range of enterprise solutions
- Easy migration from existing OEM search solutions
- Stable and reliable platform design that integrates easily into existing security fabric
- Modular and configurable system to accommodate a range of customers, markets and functions
- Well documented global support and upgrade capabilities to reduce resource needs and costs
- The widest array of supported platforms, including being the only enterprise search platform to support HP-UX 11i Itanium 2
"The advanced functionalities of search software are beginning to be incorporated in new intelligent applications across a broad range of industries and business processes," commented Hadley Reynolds, VP & Director of Research at Delphi Group, Boston, MA. "This trend to advanced search functionality is transforming the traditional OEM relationship from a passive licensing function to an active partnership in addressing new business requirements. The InStream application from FAST offers ISVs a number of facilitators that should help them speed delivery of business value in intelligent applications."
FAST InStream has been architected expressly to meet both the technical and business requirements of leading ISVs. FAST has taken into consideration the needs of the different users that interact with OEM solutions - product managers, sales, developers, and the ISV's end-users - and has fine-tuned FAST InStream to provide user-specific benefits including accelerated time-to-market, well-documented integration and migration tools, incremental revenue opportunities for sales, competitive differentiation, ease of use for developers and end-users, improved end-user TCO, and lower development costs.
Central to the success of FAST InStream and the FAST Channels organization is its commitment to delivering not only innovative partner solutions, but also the dedicated support infrastructure required to ensure mutual success. FAST is exclusively focused on delivering enterprise search solutions that either directly deliver, or enable the delivery of, exponential innovation and improvements in overall business process at the world's leading enterprises. FAST's enterprise search solutions allow partners to generate new business opportunities by offering their customers a powerful and flexible search and information retrieval technology that extends and complements our partners' platforms, solutions and market viability. Partners including BroadVision, Chordiant, LexisNexis, Orchestria, among others, have developed, licensed and integrated FAST's powerful search technology to improve the flexibility and efficiency of their application, reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), and improve their return on investment (ROI). Feedback from these partners has been instrumental in the development of the FAST InStream application.
FAST continues to provide best-in-class search technology to leading enterprise software vendors. FAST InStream stays true to the flexible framework of the FAST ESP platform, and extends world class search capabilities to ISVs around the globe. FAST's suite of enterprise search solutions supply a complete information retrieval solution ideal for key vertical markets and applications including e-Commerce and Internet Portals, Financial Services; Government; Life Sciences; Media and Publishing; and Telecom. For FAST, the search never stops.
For further information about FAST InStream, please see http://www.fastsearch.com/InStream.
About FAST
FAST creates the real-time search and filter technology solutions that are behind the scenes at the world's best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST's flexible and scalable integrated technology platform elevates the search capabilities of enterprise customers and connects people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium. This drives revenues and reduces total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure. FAST's powerful enterprise search technology solutions are used by a wide range of global customers and partners, including AT&T, Cardinal Health, CareerBuilder.com, Chordiant, CIGNA, CNET, Dell, Fidelity Investments, Findexa, FirstGov.gov (GSA), IBM, Knight Ridder, LexisNexis, Overture, Rakuten, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Sensis, Tenet Healthcare, Thomas Industrial Networks, T-Online, US Army, Virgilio (Telecom Italia), Vodafone, and Wanadoo.
FAST is headquartered in Norway and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The FAST Group operates globally with presence in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Additionally, the FAST Group has business partners and customers in a number of other locations, such as Brazil, Canada and Australia. For further information about FAST, please visit www.fastsearch.com.
(c) 2004 Fast Search & Transfer ASA - Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, FAST ESP, FAST Data Search, FAST Marketrac, FAST AdVisor, FAST InStream, and the FAST four-colored logo are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. All rights reserved. FAST disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
Contact:
Peter Gorman, Director of Corporate Communications (US), tel
+1-781-304-2495, Peter.Gorman@fastsearch.com