Lightcrest Hosted Search: Overview & Use Cases

1. Lightcrest Research and Development For Distribution http://www.lightcrest.comJune 2011 Lightcrest Hosted Search:Overview & Use Cases

2. Overview • Introduction to Lightcrest Hosted Search • Value Provided by Hosted Search • Functional Overview • Technical Overview • Ancillary Technology Integration • Use Cases of Hosted Search • Conclusion

3. 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 accessis 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.

4. Introduction (cont.) Examples of Lightcrest Hosted Search Applications • 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)

5. The Value of Hosted Search An In-House Search Center of Excellence Consists of: • 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+ 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

6. 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:

7. 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.

8. Functional Overview (cont.) Integration and Visibility • Secure, departmental access • Valuablefunctionality delivered for reduced maintenance cost versus in-house • “Invisible” infrastructure • Full access for userswhen needed • Continuously updated datain indexes and archives

9. Functional Overview (cont.) Lightcrest Hosted Search is Fully Managed • More value deliveredperdollar • Biggerbottom line benefit • Fully monitored and alerted • Fullroot access If desired • Best-of-breed network engineering • Best-of-breed information security

10. 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:

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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