Endeca Expands Search and Navigation Vision with New Enterprise Platform Release

RSS, Web Services Support Highlight Robust New Capabilities

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., November 16, 2004 -- Endeca announced today the immediate availability of Endeca ProFindTM 4.6, a new version of its award-winning enterprise search, Guided NavigationSM and Content Spotlighting platform. Building on Endeca's deep history of innovation, the new software features a wide array of powerful capabilities, including Rich Site Summary (RSS) support for custom alerting and Web Services and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) support for easy system-to-system integration and flexible customization.

Beyond a traditional enterprise search platform, Endeca ProFind combines next-generation search with Guided Navigation and Content Spotlighting capabilities to help users (employees, customers, partners, subscribers, prospects) quickly and easily find the information most relevant to their needs. Guided Navigation leverages the characteristics of data to categorize results and present valid refinement and exploration options. Endeca ProFind's robust and easily manageable Content Spotlighting capabilities promote relevant content based on defined business rules, such as user profile or workgroup, search terms, navigation options and now time of day or day of the week. This combination gives users powerful and intuitive tools to maximize the value of internal and external information, regardless of source, structure or file type.

New and expanded Endeca ProFind features include:

  • Rich Site Summary (RSS) support: New Rich Site Summary (RSS) support allows users of Endeca applications to create custom alerts and have them delivered as RSS feeds or via e-mail systems. RSS-enabled Endeca applications provide customers with a new tool to effectively deliver online content through a real-time, opt-in delivery mechanism.
  • Web Services and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) support: Endeca has extended its modular platform for easy integration and flexible customization, adding Web Services standards including Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Endeca's Web Services support makes system-to-system integration easier than ever before, enabling customers to build innovative distributed applications that can be shared between and within enterprises in a way that is easy to maintain as business processes change.
  • New time/date rules enhance business user control over Content Spotlighting: Gives non-technical staff the ability to promote or highlight specific content based on search query, browse path, user profile and now date or time time of day. This functionality is enabled using business rules created, managed and measured by non-technical workers or business owners.
  • Automatic phrase recognition for more accurate results: In addition to expanded phrase relevance ranking modules, new automatic phrase handling capabilities enhance the accuracy and relevancy of search results for multi-word queries.
  • Simplified integration with popular content management systems: New content adapters for Microsoft SharePoint and Stellent content management offerings ease application development and speed time-to-market.

"To find information quickly and effectively, users must have both browse and search tools," said Sue Feldman, IDC's VP for Content Technologies Research. "Enterprises tell us that one of the major problems that they face is unifying access to all their information -- both structured and unstructured -- and providing intuitive tools to help users find what they need. This market is highly competitive, and as it consolidates, successful vendors will have to offer more than a search engine if they are to solve all of the information needs of an enterprise."

"Whether you're trying to build a public facing application or an internal knowledge management solution, the most important criteria should be around usability. Is your retrieval solution easily managed and are end users able to find what they're looking for?" said Jim Baum, president and COO of Endeca. "Endeca ProFind 4.6 represents a platform designed with both goals in mind, and gives users a multitude of ways to intuitively find the information they need."

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 (NASA 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: info@endeca.com.