National Instruments Deploys FAST Data Search 360 for its Flexible Search Platform, Market Leading Linguistics, and Distributed Architecture
OSLO, Norway - 22 February 2005 - Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), the leading developer of enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies, announced today that National Instruments, a leader in virtual instrumentation, has selected and deployed FAST Data Search 360 to power the search capabilities of its newly unveiled corporate intranet and public facing Web site (http://www.ni.com)
Based upon FAST ESP, FASTs Enterprise Search Platform technology, FAST Data Search 360 delivers enterprise-wide capabilities for organizations that want to simultaneously support general search and/or multiple specialized search functions. FAST Data Search 360 is designed for rapid integration with low or no impact on the existing IT infrastructure, and supports multiple deployments from a single implementation. Most important, it ensures that everyone in the enterprise is drawing on the same consistent, complete, accurate and secure collection of enterprise data regardless of how broad or narrow a view they need, regardless of how many of them need it, and regardless of how large the enterprise's data assets grow.
With FASTs enterprise search platform solution, we can think out of the box in terms of managing our data and have a solid solution that meets our business demands for quickly and accurately retrieving information across our entire enterprise, stated Jeff Watts, NI Search and Community Manager. In addition, with FASTs powerful application programming interfaces (APIs), we can conduct custom searches and index a wide variety of meta data, so that search results can be categorized further enhancing our users overall search experience.
National Instruments has long been an industry leader in customer support. In fact, for three of the last four years, NI has named one of the Top Ten Best Web Support Sites by the Association of Support Professionals. The 100+ customer support engineers at NI perform the bulk of searches on the companys intranet, so it is critical that these engineers find the right information quickly. Lag time and wrong information slows down customer support and adds to expense. To maintain its high level of customer support, NI turned to FAST for a more robust search solution that could handle complex search tasks such as indexing meta-information to classify content and integrate search functions into applications beyond the Web browser.
During the evaluation process, National Instruments determined that solutions originally engineered for public Web search would not meet its needs because much of its content was not publicly exposed. Many of these search solutions relied heavily on inter-document linking and often failed to index critical information. Among the many reasons NI chose FAST Data Search 360 was its ability to complete queries quickly; index information not exposed to the public; and to support the inclusion of search functions in applications beyond the Web browser.
The extensive linguistic support offered in FAST Data Search 360 also met the business needs of NI by allowing customers in regions such as South Korea, Japan and China to search the corporate Web site in their own languages. FAST Data Search 360s ability to search across 77 languages, as well its superior native-language support, including Asian double byte character sets, has made it the search technology of choice for some of the world's largest and most geographically diverse concerns.
A growing number of globally respected businesses and organizations in a variety of markets are realizing the importance of enterprise search platform solutions for improving everything from their site search to mission-critical business applications, commented John M. Lervik, FASTs chief executive officer. National Instruments is one of the many businesses that have found FAST to be the only enterprise search vendor that is prepared with an architecture flexible and scalable enough to meet their most demanding search requirements with ease. We are pleased with their deployment of FAST Data Search 360 and look forward to building a strong relationship with them into the future.
FAST continues to transform enterprise search from a powerful, yet narrowly perceived function, into an enterprise-wide strategic and tactical capability of pivotal importance. FAST ESP and FASTs portfolio of platform solutions and SDAs supply a complete information retrieval solution ideal for a growing number of key vertical markets and applications including e-Commerce and Internet Portals, Financial Services; Government; Life Sciences; Media and Publishing; and Telecom. For FAST, the search never stops.
About National Instruments
National Instruments (www.ni.com) is a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists in industry, government and academia approach measurement and automation. Leveraging the PC and its related technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs through easy-to-integrate software, such as the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment, and modular hardware, such as PXI modules for data acquisition, instrument control and machine vision. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 3,400 employees and direct operations in approximately 40 countries. In 2004, the company sold products to more than 25,000 companies in 90 countries. For the past six years, FORTUNE magazine named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.
About FAST
FAST creates the real-time search and filter technology solutions that are behind the scenes at the worlds best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FASTs flexible and scalable integrated technology platform elevates the search capabilities of enterprise customers and connects people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium. This drives revenues and reduces total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure. FASTs powerful enterprise search technology solutions are used by a wide range of global customers and partners, including AT&T, Cardinal Health, CareerBuilder.com, Chordiant, CIGNA, CNET, Dell, Fidelity Investments, Findexa, FirstGov.gov (GSA), IBM, Knight Ridder, LexisNexis, Nordstrom, Overture, Rakuten, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Sensis, Tenet Healthcare, Thomas Industrial Networks, T-Online, US Army, Virgilio (Telecom Italia), Vodafone, and Wanadoo.
FAST is headquartered in Norway and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The FAST Group operates globally with presence in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Additionally, the FAST Group has business partners and customers in a number of other locations, such as Brazil, Canada and Australia. For further information about FAST, please visit www.fastsearch.com.
2005 Fast Search & Transfer ASA - Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, FAST ESP, FAST Data Search, FAST Marketrac, FAST AdVisor, FAST InStream, FAST ImPulse and the FAST four-colored logo are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. All rights reserved. FAST disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
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