Endeca Raises Expectations of Search With New Enterprise Platform Release

New Personalization, Management and Relevance Ranking Features Improve Enterprise and Site Search Results

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., August 3, 2004 -- Endeca, the only provider of advanced search and Guided NavigationSM solutions for the enterprise, announced today the immediate availability of Endeca ProFindTM 4.5, a new version of the company's award-winning enterprise search and navigation platform. The new software offers features designed to help leading government agencies and Global 2000 businesses across a wide range of industries realize the full potential of their enterprise content, for employee, customer, and partner-facing initiatives.

Endeca ProFind combines next-generation search, Guided Navigation and Content Spotlighting capabilities to help organizations integrate and take advantage of structured, semi-structured and unstructured enterprise data. Used as the information delivery backbone for portals, intranets, extranets, directories, public-facing web sites and enterprise applications, ProFind gives customers, prospects, employees and partners intuitive and efficient access to the most relevant data to improve decision making.

Building on a robust and proven platform, Endeca ProFind 4.5 includes several new features designed to improve relevancy, customize the discovery process and further simplify administration and management. These features include:

  • Personalization: Enhances the flexibility of Content Spotlighting by enabling the promotion of relevant information based on the user’s profile.
  • Search Application Wizard: Enables non-technical staff to create fully-functional search and navigation applications in a matter of minutes
  • Enhanced Classification and Taxonomy Management: Robust auto-classification capabilities and simplified integration of external taxonomies speed time to market and eases development and maintenance
  • New Administration Tools: New web-based interface simplifying administration and maintenance of Endeca implementations.

Working closely with Endeca customers in information publishing, manufacturing, financial services, retail and government, all of the new features were created to meet the specific and unique needs of the constituents served by these leading organizations.

According to a July 2004 report entitled "Scenario Design: A Disciplined Approach to the Customer Experience" from leading independent research firm, Forrester Research, the customer experience will determine the search wars. Forrester notes: As the search wars rage -- with Google, MSN, and Yahoo! on the Web, Microsoft, and Apple on the desktop, and players like Autonomy, Endeca and Verity inside the enterprise -- customer experience will determine the winner. The report adds that the most powerful solutions will be those that let people search in conjunction with other methods like sorting, filtering, and navigating by links -- all integrated together so that users can quickly accomplish their goals.

Hadley Reynolds, VP and Director, Research Programs for Delphi Group, an independent strategic advisory firm, adds, "Delphi Research indicates that Information Intelligence will play a pivotal role in the next generation of enterprise applications: from e-business to proactive knowledge applications. Endeca is continuing to expand the range of enterprise capabilities available in its software, providing the kind of deep analytic and presentation options application strategists are demanding. The result will be smarter interactions between the enterprise, its employees, and its customers."

Endeca Search and Guided Navigation solutions help knowledge-centric organizations in government, financial services, manufacturing, information publishing, business-to-business commerce and retail maximize the value of their content, catalog and enterprise information assets. Endeca is used worldwide in a wide range of enterprise and customer applications including Knowledge Management, CRM, customer and employee self-service, analytics, catalogs, directories, and portal integration.

About Endeca

Endeca’s award-winning Search and Guided Navigation solutions help organizations to integrate, discover, and navigate enterprise data to solve business problems associated with information overload. Endeca’s customers include a wide range of enterprises including retailers (Barnes & Noble, CompUSA, 1-800-Flowers, and BMG Music); finance (Putnam Investments, MFS Investments, and Quick & Reilly); business-to-business companies (IBM, Arrow Electronics and CDW); content delivery (World Book and IHS) and government (CIA and the Library of Congress). In 2004, the AlwaysOn Network named Endeca one of the top 100 private companies in North America. Endeca is headquartered in Cambridge, MA. More info: www.endeca.com or email us at info@endeca.com.