Business & Money Trail:

FAST UNVEILS ADVANCED REAL-TIME INFO RETRIEVAL SOLUTION

Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a leading developer of search and real-time filter technologies, announced the launch of FAST Data Search 3.0, a powerful search solution for enterprise and Internet environments. The next-generation product suite shatters the traditional notion of information retrieval by delivering a highly modular and scalable application suite combining real-time search functionality with a real-time filter/alert engine for dynamic information processing, advanced linguistics functionality, and flexible content access and integration options. By leveraging FAST Data Search 3.0, corporations increase their return on investment (ROI) by building and maintaining tight customer relationships, and improving the way they utilize their investments in data and technology infrastructure.

Already behind the scenes of leading corporations such as IBM, Reuters, Reed Elsevier, and eBay, FAST Data Search 3.0 provides a proven, revenue-generating search solution for enterprises in e-commerce, banking/financial services, media services and independent software vendor (ISV) markets. FAST Data Search 3.0 solves highly complex and mission-critical search and information retrieval challenges by retrieving structured/unstructured data and conducting parametric searches within databases and XML feeds, while cost-effectively utilizing existing IT architecture.

The product modularity together with flexible application programming interfaces (API's) ensures FAST Data Search 3.0 can be rapidly integrated with existing software solutions such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, database OLTP systems and portal solutions. Currently, FAST Data Search is sold as part of BroadVision, Chordiant Software, and TIBCO Software products, with distribution relationships through BEA Systems and Microsoft Corporation.

"Large corporations are faced with the staggering challenge of turning today's vast data resources into usable information. At any given time, the most relevant information must be accessible from the terabytes of data stored on enterprise systems and the Internet, on a multitude of computing platforms, data formats, and written languages," said John M. Lervik, chief executive officer at FAST. "FAST Data Search 3.0 provides our customers with a single search and retrieval solution that overcomes these challenges by turning data into usable information that increases their profitability."

FAST Data Search 3.0 represents the next-generation of search solutions by offering the following uniquely powerful features:

• Infinite linear scalability with lower total cost of ownership
• FAST Data Search 3.0 utilizes the same high performance, scalable core technology platform as the FAST Web Search engine at AlltheWeb.com. Benchmarks from customer evaluations show unmatched search-per-server performance. This high-end performance, combined with predictable, linear scalability on high-efficiency, low-cost servers, drastically reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO), while providing unlimited scalability for any number of queries and amount of searchable data. FAST Data Search 3.0 provides more queries per server and off-loads transaction processing to more efficient servers, thereby reducing IT architecture and hardware costs, and allowing databases to concentrate on pure transaction and management tasks.
• Real-time indexing capabilities - FAST Data Search 3.0 provides unique sub-second latency from the time a document is available until it is searchable within the system. This level of data freshness is key to delivering highly relevant results, and is a prerequisite for driving revenues through e-business channels. Applying these capabilities to parametric search in databases creates a unique opportunity to search live databases for the most relevant mission-critical information.
• Access to historic and real-time data - Next-generation search is characterized by advanced functionality, which interprets and understands the intent of a query in order to accurately filter and push relevant information to the end-users. FAST Data Search 3.0 combines customizable search with real-time filter/alert functionality, enabling users to both search existing data and proactively receive information matching pre-defined query or user profiles. Competitive advantage is gained by receiving and leveraging relevant information in real-time.
• Comprehensive relevancy processing features - FAST Data Search 3.0 handles grammatical and conceptual variations within the data, such as natural language processing and misspelling of queries. The advanced computational linguistics modules provide leading performance in the market. Automatic, out-of-the-box support for over 49 languages (the largest in the market) enable global enterprises to leverage their investment in multiple markets while retrieving accurate information independent of language. Robust content handling options, such as automatic categorization and dynamic result clustering, allow users to locate information quickly and easily. Innovative virtual collection functionality, combined with highly customizable document and query/result processing modules, enable system configuration on a per-collection basis with customizable relevancy tuning for different sources or partitions of information.
• Modular product structure and business model - FAST Data Search 3.0 enables the customers to easily mix and match individual data access modules (Web crawler, file traverser, database connector, and XML converter) for integration with enterprise applications and add search or data volume capacity and value-add features such as advanced real-time, linguistics and security options. FAST Data Search 3.0 can be delivered as a software solution or via an application service provider (ASP) delivery model hosted by FAST or FAST partners.

By offering a variety of options in deployment and functionality, FAST Data Search 3.0 customers have an efficient model for meeting the needs of their organization while cost-effectively using their existing IT architecture.

"With the new release of FAST Data Search, I see an excellent choice for those needing a high-end, scalable search engine," said Avi Rappoport, a leading authority on enterprise search technology and the principal consultant of Search Tools Consulting. "FAST includes real-time indexing, a modular and scalable architecture and integration with Web standards including XML and SOAP. The linguistic analysis, query processing and distribution quality assessment functions are innovative and powerful. This solution can increase revenues for e-commerce companies, and improve search functionality on public Web sites and Intranets."

For further information about FAST Data Search 3.0, please contact a FAST sales representative at sales@fastsearch.com.

About FAST

Fast Search & Transfer ASA (FAST) creates the real-time search and filter technology solutions that are behind the scenes at some of the world's best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST's flexible and scalable integrated technology platform spans both Internet and enterprise customers, and elevates search to unprecedented levels. FAST closes the gap between information and action, connecting people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium, in turn driving revenue and reducing total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure for our clients and world-class partners. FAST search technology is currently deployed by a wide range of global customers and partners including BroadVision, eBay, Ericsson, IBM, Reed Elsevier (Scirus.com), Reuters, T-Online, and Terra Lycos.

FAST has operations in the United States, Europe (Norway, Germany, UK), and Japan. Please visit www.fastsearch.com for more information or see FAST in action at our technology showcase www.alltheweb.com.