IBM Extends Global Reach of Free Enterprise Search Software

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today introduced a new version of the free IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition enterprise search software, which supports more than a dozen new languages to enable users worldwide to quickly and easily find, access and capitalize on information stored within organizations and across the Web.

The new version of OmniFind Yahoo! Edition was developed to address growing global customer demand for access to the software, as well as to provide additional functionality that will improve the user experience.

In less than four months since its launch, more than 16,000 users have downloaded IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition and organizations of all sizes are using it to improve their enterprise search experience. The early users include manufacturers, consulting firms, financial services organizations, professional services organizations, universities, state and local governments and school districts. The free software also has rapidly generated interest in IBM’s enterprise-class OmniFind search products and resulted in customers opting for the full-scale search offering after testing the free version.

“The new OmniFind Yahoo! Edition product has not only made enterprise search ubiquitous and free, it has changed the competitive dynamics of the search market,” said Aaron Brown, program director, Content Discovery and Search, IBM. “By helping clients free up access to information and use it in new ways, we’ve increased the momentum and impact of our cross-company Information On Demand growth initiative.”

iCentera, a leading provider of on-demand CRM portals that drive marketing, sales and customer communication, is using IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition to enhance their ability to search content accessible on more than 5,000 iCentera client portals. “After an extensive evaluation process spent looking at enterprise search software and appliances alike, we selected IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition to enable in-document searching from our portals, allowing users to locate the content that is most highly relevant to them,” said Craig Nelson, president and CEO, iCentera.

The company, which creates feature-rich web portals on demand, helps companies provide employees, partners and customers with access to large volumes of content so they can quickly find the information they need. “This is a truly robust enterprise search offering that supports up to 500,000 documents per server, provides a search relevance rating, supports more than 200 file types and indexing of more than 30 languages,” Nelson said. “IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is seamlessly integrated within our solution, combining the best of our technology with a powerful in-document search capability, making our own offering even more compelling.”

The new version of IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition includes localized language support to meet expanding worldwide demand for the product. New languages supported include Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Dutch, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese and Swedish.

Additional features in the new version of OmniFind Yahoo! Edition also help users more easily build new custom search applications or add customized content beyond Web pages and office documents. The usability improvements also make it easier to integrate search results into the look and feel of existing applications or include content from a third-party content source. Other enhancements make it easier to do advanced searches by using metadata to refine search results or create more targeted searches on top of initial search results.

IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition uses the open source Lucene indexing library to provide a versatile combination of simplicity, openness, and functionality. Customers and business partners have tapped this open approach to information search and access to identify creative, compelling and unexpected new uses for the product. This includes enterprise search running on a flash thumb drive, integrating enterprise search with instant messaging applications, and using search to enhance existing software applications.

Among the many business partners using OmniFind Yahoo! Edition to develop new solutions is Tetrad Digital Integrity LLC (TDI), a provider of information security and information assurance services and solutions. Using the software, TDI is developing a new information security and compliance solution for organizations to control massive amounts of data on their network and identify files containing sensitive information.

“TDI’s solution, coupled with IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition, will provide government and businesses greater control over their information flow while providing a flexible information protection system,” said Paul Innella, TDI President and CEO. “This new solution is designed to automatically search for and obscure sensitive information and prevent its release.”

IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is available at no charge and can be downloaded at http://omnifind.ibm.yahoo.com. Worldwide, enterprise-class phone support is available from IBM.