REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Nov. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Many organizations developing Big Data applications first focus on trying to control, manage and secure the burgeoning volumes of data being generated. However, that step just scratches the surface of unlocking the data's ability to power competitive advantage. It is only when these multi-structured data stores become accessible to search and discovery that the information is transformed into corporate assets from which business insights can be derived and true value can be delivered to the organization. To develop these insights, robust search capability must be built into Big Data applications from the beginning, not added on as an after-thought.

LucidWorks, the trusted name in Search, Discovery and Analytics, today announced the general availability of LucidWorks Big Data™, an application development platform that integrates search capabilities into the foundational layer of Big Data implementations. Built on a foundation of key Apache open source projects, LucidWorks Big Data enables organizations to quickly uncover, access and evaluate large volumes of previously dark data in order to make more informed, better business decisions. Using LucidWorks Big Data, organizations have been able to attain insights that were previously locked away in their vast data stores, honing their competitive edge and slashing the time it takes to meet their organizations' goals.

LucidWorks Big Data Makes an Impact

The release of LucidWorks Big Data follows a comprehensive and highly collaborative beta program through which the product's integrations, scalability, usability and APIs were rigorously tested.

"Computing for Disasters is an initiative that has the potential to revolutionize our nation's preparedness and resilience in the face of future disasters by adopting a computational perspective to fundamental scientific, engineering, and social barriers to disaster management and related research.  To collect, manage, and analyze a diverse range of data sources takes a comprehensive big data architecture that offers a powerful search engine at its core.  We made the decision to take advantage of the LucidWorks Big Data platform because it offers key capabilities in a tightly integrated solution."
 - Dr. Edward Fox, Professor, Virginia Tech Department of Computer Science

"Bright Planet is a pioneer in Deep Web Intelligence, offering our customers the ability to perform deep harvesting of public information that lies beneath the surface of the web.  Our customers span across both public and private sectors.  We made the decision to work with the LucidWorks Big Data platform because of its ability to seamlessly and quickly gather large amounts of information from a variety of different sources (in addition to the web) – and then offer it to our patented deep harvesting search technology. We believe that the combined capability will offer valued solutions to organizations across both private and public sectors."
 - Steve Pederson, CEO and Chairman, BrightPlanet Corporation

"At OpenSource Connections, we spend a lot of time building infrastructure around Solr in order to continually enhance enterprise search capabilities. LucidWorks has all of that right out-of-the-box. One of the killer features for me is the ability to use any of the LucidWorks Search connectors to ingest data into a cluster, perform analytics on it, and use those results to improve search and data discovery. I've spent months building that sort of thing from scratch, and in LucidWorks Big Data I can do it in about five service calls."
 - Scott Stults, Founder and Solutions Architect, OpenSource Connections

With the general availability of LucidWorks Big Data, organizations can now utilize a single platform for their Big Data search, discovery and analytics needs. Designed to be ready out-of-the-box, LucidWorks Big Data is the industry's only solution that combines the power of multiple Apache open source projects, including Hadoop, Mahout, Hive and Lucene/Solr, to provide search, machine learning, recommendation engines and analytics for structured and unstructured content in one complete solution available in the cloud, on premise or as a hybrid solution.

The LucidWorks Big Data platform includes all of the necessary open source components, pre-integrated and certified, as indicated in this diagram. LucidWorks equips technologists and business users with the ability to initially pilot Big Data projects on premise or in the cloud. This means that organizations can avoid the staggering overhead costs and long lead times associated with infrastructure and application development lifecycles while assessing product fit.

LucidWorks Big Data is the only complete development platform that includes:

• A unified development platform for developing Big Data applications
• A certified and tightly integrated open source stack:  Hadoop, Lucene/Solr, Mahout, NLP, Hive
• Single uniform REST API
• Out-of-the-box provisioning – cloud or on premise
• Pre-tuned software by open source industry experts

"Working closely with our beta customers, we've witnessed the significant business value that they've achieved through their LucidWorks Big Data projects," said Paul Doscher, president and CEO of LucidWorks. "LucidWorks Big Data helps companies leap forward by uncovering trends and insights they never would have been able to leverage previously. Whether it's growing revenue, expanding into new markets or increasing customer satisfaction, LucidWorks Big Data helps companies achieve their business goals by extracting, analyzing and quickly acting on critical operational information from their ever-compounding collection of data."

LucidWorks Big Data will be available for download by mid-December.  To sign up for notification, visit http://www.lucidworks.com/products/lucidworks-big-data.  To learn more about LucidWorks Big Data, please visit www.lucidworks.com, email info@lucidworks.com or call (650) 353-4057.

Resources

• Watch the future of search unfold on the LucidWorks blog
• Follow LucidWorks on Twitter @LucidImagineer and Facebook
• Learn how leading companies are benefiting from LucidWorks in these Lucene Revolution videos and presentations
• Read more in this whitepaper on Computing for Disasters

About LucidWorks (Formerly Lucid Imagination)

LucidWorks is the only company that delivers enterprise-grade search development platforms built on the power of Apache Lucene/Solr open source search. Out of the 37 Core Committers to the Apache Lucene/Solr project, eight individuals work for LucidWorks, making the company the largest supporter of open source search in the industry. Customers include AT&T, Sears, Ford, Verizon, Cisco, Zappos, Raytheon, The Guardian, The Smithsonian Institution, Salesforce.com, The Motley Fool, Qualcomm, Taser, eHarmony and many other household names around the world. LucidWorks' investors include Shasta Ventures, Granite Ventures, Walden International and In-Q-Tel. Learn more about the company at www.lucidworks.com.

SOURCE LucidWorks