French National Library Chooses Exalead to Accelerate Digital Revolution

Strategic Choice Meets Today’s Needs and Anticipates Those of Tomorrow

VÉLIZY-VILLACOUBLAY, France, - Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) announced today that its subsidiary, Exalead, a global provider of search and information access software for the enterprise and the Web, has been selected by the French National Library (BNF/Bibliothèque Nationale de France) to provide the information access infrastructure for its “Gallica” digital library project. The BNF joins other prestigious French institutions in designating Exalead as its partner of choice in preserving and promoting the nation’s cultural assets in the digital age. These institutions include the French Office of the President (Elysée), the French Government News Agency (Journaux Officiels), the National Audiovisual Institute (INA/Institut National de l’Audiovisuel), and the French international news channel France 24.

Deploying an innovative and agile solution for information access is critical to the success of large scale digitization efforts like Gallica. To date, the BNF has digitized more than one million works, including books, maps, manuscripts, images, periodicals, scores and sound recordings, and made them available to the public via its Gallica Web platform, gallica.bnf.fr. To ensure broad adoption of this rich resource by the public, and to ensure the long-term survivability of the cultural heritage Gallica embodies, the BNF knew it needed an information access strategy that could satisfy contemporary modes of accessing and consuming information, while ensuring adaptability to future evolutions. Therefore the BNF issued a European call for bids and chose Exalead CloudView as the optimal solution for meeting its current and long term information access needs. Advanced linguistic and semantic features, high performance, and flexibility are among the strong points that lead the BNF to make this choice.

“The Gallica project is a model of innovation. It is breaking new ground in leveraging digital technologies to preserve a distinctive cultural heritage in a global age, and in providing dual access to both public domain and copyrighted digital material while fully respecting copyright law and authors’ rights" explains Laurent Couillard, CEO of Exalead. “It’s the perfect challenge for the 21st century, and we’re thrilled the BNF has chosen Exalead as its partner of choice to fulfill its visionary mission.”

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About Exalead

Founded in 2000 by Search engine pioneers, Exalead® is the leading search-based application platform provider to business and government. Exalead’s worldwide client base includes leading companies such as PricewaterhouseCooper, ViaMichelin, GEFCO, WorldBank and Sanofi Pasteur, and more than 100 million unique users a month use Exalead’s technology for search. Today, Exalead is reshaping the digital content landscape with its platform, Exalead CloudView™, which uses advanced semantic technologies to bring structure, meaning and accessibility to previously unused or under-used data in the new hybrid enterprise and Web information cloud. CloudView collects data from virtually any source, in any format, and transforms it into structured, pervasive, contextualized building blocks of business information that can be directly searched and queried, or used as the foundation for a new breed of lean, innovative information access applications. Exalead website: www.exalead.com

Exalead was acquired by Dassault Systèmes in June 2010. Exalead has offices in Paris, San Francisco, Glasgow, Milan, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.


About Dassault Systèmes

As a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, Dassault Systèmes brings value to more than 130,000 customers in 80 countries. A pioneer in the 3D software market since 1981, Dassault Systèmes applications provide a 3D vision of the entire lifecycle of products from conception to maintenance to recycling. The Dassault Systèmes portfolio consists of CATIA for designing the virtual product - SolidWorks for 3D mechanical design - DELMIA for virtual production - SIMULIA for virtual testing - ENOVIA for global collaborative lifecycle management, and 3DVIA for online 3D lifelike experiences. For more information, visit http://www.3ds.com.