SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwire - February 4, 2011) - Lucid Imagination, the commercial company behind Apache Solr/Lucene search technology, today announced record company growth and unprecedented customer adoption. In 2010, the company doubled sales growth year over year, and has closed more than 150 customers, including household names known around the world.
Adoption of Solr/Lucene continues to accelerate as organizations of all types recognize the value and opportunity offered by this fast, flexible open source search technology. Business-critical search applications in e-commerce, government, research, media, telecommunications, Web 2.0, and many more use Solr/Lucene to ensure end users can find valuable, accurate information quickly and efficiently across the enterprise. Lucid Imagination complements the strengths of this technology with commercial-grade software and services -- backed by unmatched expertise -- that help organizations optimize performance and achieve high-quality search results with their Solr/Lucene search applications.
Since the public launch of Lucid Imagination in January of 2009, the company has made major leaps in accelerating enterprise adoption of Solr/Lucene. Highlights from 2010 include:
- Market Leadership:
- Doubled sales year over year.
- Expanded Lucid Imagination's customer base to more than 150 companies.
- Expanded venture funding to total $16 million.
- Technology and Expertise Leadership:
- Launched the LucidWorks Enterprise solution development platform, the only search platform that scales economically, thanks to its flexible, cost-effective architecture built on open source.
- Lucid Imagination now has seven employees committing to the Solr/Lucene project, or half of the committers. The deep technical bench strength that is making a major contribution to the project is also available to customers.
- Expanded seasoned management team to support demand and sales growth, naming Peter Tait as vice president of marketing and Sarath Jarugula as vice president of product management.
- Industry Leadership:
- Hosted two of Solr/Lucene's most significant events: EuroCon and Lucene Revolution. Lucene Revolution was the first U.S. conference dedicated to changing the face of search by sharing best practices and use cases related to the rise of open source search as a disruptive force for innovation and collaboration capable of breaking the financial and technical handcuffs of proprietary software. The event attracted speakers from established and innovative companies.
- Apache Solr/Lucene was named as one of the top technologies to consider for enterprise search, in "Decision Matrix: Selecting an Enterprise Search Vendor" by industry analyst firm Ovum. The report asserts, "Solr/Lucene 1.4 is truly enterprise grade and its open source code can be immensely helpful for organizations that are trying to explore facets of search not provided by commercial vendors."
- Lucid Imagination gained continued industry acclaim and recognition, being named to EContent 100 for the second consecutive year, winning KMWorld's 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management, being included in the CRN 2010 list of the 25 Coolest Emerging Vendors, and named a finalist for the Red Herring 100 Award. Apache Solr/Lucene received similar recognition, winning the 2010 InfoWorld BOSSIE, Best of Open Source Software award.
Quotes and Multimedia
"I attribute our continued rapid growth to the widespread recognition that we have freed business-critical search from the expensive, rigid cost structure of proprietary commercial search software," said Eric Gries, CEO of Lucid Imagination. "The power and economics of Solr/Lucene is now an accepted industry truth, and as more and more organizations discover they can have enterprise-grade support to quickly and easily integrate, develop, and deploy Solr-based search applications, I fully expect this growth to accelerate."
"Lucene is more than 10 years old. Lucid Imagination is less than three years old. Lucid has made giant steps in providing a version of Solr/Lucene that is enterprise ready. Remarkable," said Stephen E. Arnold, president of ArnoldIT and noted search industry blogger and thought leader. "When I hear some search vendors insist that Solr/Lucene is not sufficiently mature or stable for a high demand application, I ask, 'What is the Netflix search system? What does Salesforce.com use?' The answer, I point out is Solr/Lucene."
- Learn more about Lucid Imagination or download LucidWorks Enterprise software: www.lucidimagination.com/lwe/download
- View a demonstration of LucidWorks Enterprise
- Access LucidWorks Enterprise whitepapers and tutorials
- Read further commentary on the Lucid Imagination blog
About Lucid Imagination
Lucid Imagination is the commercial company exclusively dedicated to Apache Solr/Lucene open source enterprise search technology. It LucidWorks Enterprise, the definitive search solution development platforms built on the power of Solr/Lucene open source search. Offered via enterprise-grade subscriptions, LucidWorks Enterprise makes the power of Solr/Lucene open source search more accessible to the broad range of application developers, slashing the learning curve for search solution development. Unlike "black box" products, LucidWorks Enterprise allows organizations of all sizes and types to continuously tune their search to fit the ongoing needs of their users and achieve a consistently lower cost of growth. Lucid Imagination also offers free software for developers, documentation, commercial-grade support, high-level consulting, and comprehensive training. Customers include AT&T, Sears, Ford, Verizon, Cisco, Zappos, Raytheon, The Guardian, The Smithsonian Institution, Salesforce.com, The Motley Fool, Qualcomm, Taser, eHarmony, and many other household names around the world. Lucid Imagination is a privately held venture-funded company. The investors include Shasta Ventures, Granite Ventures, Walden International, and In-Q-Tel. Learn more about the company at www.lucidimagination.com.
Contact Information:
Contact:
Eastwick Communications
lucid@eastwick.com
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