lightcrest research and development for distribution june 2011

Lightcrest Hosted Search:Overview & Use Cases

Lightcrest Research and Development For Distribution

http://www.lightcrest.com

June 2011

Hosted Search Overview © 2011 Lightcrest

Overview

Introduction to Lightcrest Hosted Search

Value Provided by Hosted Search

Functional Overview

Technical Overview

Ancillary Technology Integration

Use Cases of Hosted Search

Conclusion


Introduction to Lightcrest Hosted Search

Search and search-powered interfaces (dashboards, analytics control panels, faceted result sets, etc.) are positioned in the enterprise today as the interface of choice among employees, customers, and executives.

For many organizations, the benefits of unified information access is encumbered by costs that may be prohibitive or excessive. Maintaining the physical infrastructure and engineering staff required to implement a best-of-breed search deployment is cost-prohibitive for organizations that don't maintain a search COE (center of excellence).

Lightcrest Hosted Search, like other Lightcrest Application Management Services (AMS) solutions, aims to address these cost imbalances and deliver outsized value for organizations looking to increase the effectiveness of their information retrieval and archival systems.


Introduction (cont.)

Public Web Site Search (Web pages, Office docs, PDFs, etc.) Private Intranet Search (Employee blogs, Wiki pages, etc.) Document Management System Search (Documentum, Notes, EMC) ERP / CRM System Search Database Search Offload (Oracle DB, MySQL slow queries) Archival Search and Document Management (financial institutions,

law firms, library science) Geolocation Search (restaurant locator, product review websites)

Examples of Lightcrest Hosted Search Applications


The Value of Hosted Search

Senior Search Engineers ($100k/year+ each) Senior Systems Administration Staff ($100k/year+ each) Senior Web Developers ($75k/year+ each) Senior DBA ($120k/year+ each) Third Party / Vendor Consultants ($200/hour+)

Datacenter Infrastructure (Networking, Power, HVAC, etc.) ($10-60k/month) Full time datacenter IT staff on call or contracted labor ($5k/month+)

Total Aggregate In-House: $60-$100k/month+

An In-House Search Center of Excellence Consists of:

Compare with Lightcrest Hosted Search / AMS:

2-Node Cluster: $1999/month 4-Node Cluster: $3999/month Enterprise Cluster: Starting at $10,000/month

NO variable costs and NO infrastructure costs


Functional Overview

Securely Request/Receive Information from the EnterpriseSources: DMS, DB, Web, ERP, CRM

Process and Index the Information Received(Linguistics, Classification, ETL, external API calls)

Present Secure Search Interface to Enterprise Users(Web DMS, XML API, Sharepoint, Simple Search)

Lightcrest Hosted Search Main Objectives:


Functional Overview (cont.)

Lightcrest Hosted Search Supported Platforms

• Microsoft FAST ESP 5.x• Solr / Lucene by the Apache Foundation• Lucid Imagination LucidWorks Enterprise• Attivio AIE• Autonomy• Google Search Appliance• Convera• Oracle Enterprise Search

In addition to the above enterprise search platforms, Lightcrest HS/AMS works closely with organizations to integrate third-party business intelligence, linguistic analysis, machine learning, and automatic classification frameworks.

By working with industry-leading vendors, Lightcrest HS/AMS protects your existing technology investment.



Integration and Visibility

• Secure, departmental access

• Valuable functionality delivered for reduced maintenance cost versus in-house

• “Invisible” infrastructure

• Full access for users when needed

• Continuously updated data in indexes and archives



Lightcrest Hosted Search is Fully Managed

• More value delivered per dollar

• Bigger bottom line benefit

• Fully monitored and alerted

• Full root access If desired

• Best-of-breed network engineering

• Best-of-breed information security


Technical Overview

Hosted in Lightcrest Tier IV fortified and climate controlled datacenter facilities

Hosted on Lightcrest computing and network infrastructure – no third party cloud services

Multiple Tier 1 IP transit providers ensure maximum global availability to your entire network

Supported by full staff of Lightcrest systems engineers and network engineers

Supported by triple off-site backup and on & off-site Lightcrest NOC monitoring

Lightcrest Hosted Search and AMS Infrastructure:


Technical Overview (cont.)

All network connectivity is performed over secure VPN connections or end-to-end encrypted SSL connections

All user accounts and information governed by ACLs and other security policies

Multiple methods of exposing search functionality: RESTful APIs, custom HTTP servers, custom XML responses, custom text responses, web interfaces, in-browser content management systems and third party systems such as Sharepoint

Full integration with CDN vendors such as Akamai or Level 3 for accelerated worldwide delivery of content.

Working Together With Your Team and Investments


Ancillary Technology Integration

Search is only a starting point: Lightcrest Professional Services works closely with Lightcrest AMS and HS to deliver additional consulting, integration, and design work.

Parallel computing, machine learning, automatic classification, advanced linguistics, bioinformatics, high availability architecture, multiple datacenter installations.

Lightcrest solutions also integrate with custom technology on the customer side such as contextual advertising engines, corporate social networks, content management systems, and other applications both outside and behind the corporate firewall.

Adding Value Beyond Information Retrieval


Use Case #1 – Financial Institution

Asian Development Bank

• Lightcrest Hosted Solr 3.1 (Lucene Merge)• Drupal 7 Social Network Integration• Linux-based Server Infrastructure

A major Asia-based development bank chose Lightcrest to deploy and manage its main corporate website, based on Drupal 7 with Solr integration to search over 2M documents available on its website.

With a diverse international audience from around the globe, ADB required sophisticated linguistics support in both its web front-end and search back-end systems, and expected Lightcrest to provide round-the-clock support and administration of its services.

Lightcrest’s unique skillset that lies at the intersection of network architecture, search engineering, and social network development allowed for a quick project transition given tight timelines and budgets.


Use Case #2 – Public Sector Communications

Voice of America / BBG

• Lightcrest Hosted Solr 1.4• Multi-Lingual Russian, Chinese, and Farsi Support• Learning Management System (LMS) Integration• Akamai CDN Integration

The Broadcasting Board of Governors, a US Federal Government agency, needed a vendor with the ability to design, host, and manage a search engine with multi-lingual indexing capabilities for their GoEnglish suite of websites used by young people all over the world.

Launched in accordance with VOA’s mission of promoting American values around the world, Lightcrest worked with VOA’s designers and web developers to deliver an integrated search experience that allowed users to see cultural content and user generated content from anywhere on the internet or mobile phones. In addition to developing sophisticated multi-lingual search functionality, Lightcrest worked closely with technical teams at VOA and BBG to deliver global CDN integration to scale origin web servers past normal duty cycles, thereby reducing power and energy footprints.


Use Case #3 – Online Marketing and Advertising

Press4

• Lightcrest Hosted Solr 3.1• Interactive Voice System Integration• Social Network Integration• CDN Integration and Cloud Computing

Currently under development, Press4 is a next-generation marketing platform powered by interactive voice, smartphone applications, and the social web.

Lightcrest is architecting and hosting the vendor and product search engine used by Press4 and is excited to be working with the team to bring the next generation of interactive marketing platforms online.


Conclusion

Enjoy a reduced bottom-line cost structure for your IT organization

Take advantage of expertise at every layer of the OSI model

Benefit from search SMEs and senior architects without increaseing payroll

Leverage comprehensive solutions that integrate with your existing technology investments

Application-level SLAs ensure 24x7x365 monitoring of your search application

Utilize expertise in multi-lingual search to increase the global reach of your products and services

Realize substantial cost savings and increased revenues through an outsourced search center of excellence

Lightcrest Hosted Search Benefits Your Enterprise

lightcrest research and development for distribution june 2011

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