As of January, 2012, this site is no longer being updated, due to work and health issues

Search Tools Product Reports

Verity K2 and other Search Products

Verity and all its products were acquired by Autonomy in December, 2005. K2 is being incorporated into Autonomy IDOL. Ultraseek is still being developed.

Verity Product Information

Price: not provided, generally $100,000 and up
Platforms: Windows NT 4, 2000; Unix: Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, DEC Unix, Linux

Major Features

• Verity K2 Developer April 2002
  • OEM toolkit for search, content organization and social networks
• Indexing crawler and file system recognizes several hundred file formats.
• Powerful security interfaces, on both collection and document level.
• Indexes content from many sources, notably Lotus Notes collections
• Extensive language support: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and more.
• Queries using Boolean search with options for stemming, fuzzy search and concept extraction.
• Integrates with Verity Classification for category browsing.
• Provides WebTop portal interface.
• Enables communities of users and expert location.
• Can scale to multiple servers for size, responsiveness and fault tolerance.
  

Articles and Reviews

• Command Line K2 using Windows Scripting NIE Enterprise Search, April 25, 2003, by Miles Kehoe
  
• Search On Information Week, January 20, 2003 by Tony Kontzer
  Discusses the need for useful search engines in corporate intranets. Describes experiences in Ford's Learning Network using Autonomy; Bank One and Kaiser Permanente using the Google Search Appliance for simplicity, low cost and speed; KMPG UK's use of Verity K2 for sophisticated taxonomy and social networking; Gateway's implementation of iPhrase for support technicians; and EDS using Recommind for role-related search results.
  
  
• Verity: True Value EContent Magazine, July 2002 by Sandy Serva
  Quotes from company president describe success with the Siemens worldwide web search, Cisco CD-based documentation and Southwest Bell tariff data handling.
  
  
• Adding Search To Enterprise Apps InformationWeek, May 6 2002 by Tony Kontzer
  Information on the new K2 Developer version, which includes personalization and categorization capabilities for integration with OEMs. Reports that FileNet plans to replace Hummingbird Fulcrum with Verity K2 in it's CMS, Bell Globemedia Interactive has replaced AltaVista with Verity for text search, supplementing Virage video search.
  
  
• Verity Soars to new Heights IT-Director.com, October 1 2001 by "Caterpillar"
  Praises features of K2Enterprise, especially the "Social Networks" feature which is supposed to identify subject experts by their behavior and link them to internal information and other experts. Also mentions high-profile Verity installations. Reader comments are more skeptical.
  
  
• Seeking far and wide for the right data InfoWorld, August 27 / September 3, 2001 by Cathleen Moore.
  Describes the value of search engines and categorization as essential elements of corporate portal infrastructures, to handle the "deluge" of information within enterprises. Quotes Aberdeen analyst Guy Creese who points out that without a good way to search, corporations would be "blowing their investment in the content". Covers recent announcements of search and categorization features by Autonomy, Verity, AltaVista, iPhrase, and Smartlogik (Muscat).
  
  
• Search technology gains recognition InfoWorld, July 30, 2001 by Cathleen Moore
  Covers search and categorization technology for corporations from Verity and Smartlogik (Muscat). Includes analyst quotes about the importance of search in handling huge amounts of content. Describes Verity "Social Networks" using business rules to make taxonomies more useful. Smartlogik's Muscatdiscovery search engine stresses natural-language searching, Muscatstructure provides rules-based categorization, both can integrate into application servers using Java or Com+.
  
  
• Portal links buyers, sellers eWeek, February 5, 2001 by Grant Du Bois
  Coverage of Verity K2 Catalog, e-commerce portal framework for categorization, display and personalization of product information. Can search by price or part number, suggest complementary products. Allows search admin to control the products for specified strings, based on their search log analysis.
  
  
• Portals Tame Chaotic Content -- Packaged software helps Nasdaq parent rein in multiple systems InternetWeek July 10, 2000 by Ted Kemp
  Description of the National Association of Securities Dealers intranet site, which is using the Verity Portal One software to customize the portal, index, search and categorize files.
  
  
• [Choosing a Search Engine for INRIA]: Rapport Final (in French) INRIA, July 8, 1999 by Francis Avnaim
  Report of a committee charged with choosing a search engine for INRIA (French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control), covering over 200,000 pages. Mainly compares AltaVista Search with Verity.
  
  
• Verity add-on makes portals easier to build, navigate Infoworld, March 22 1999 by Emily Fitzloff
  Product announcement for Verity Knowledge Organizer, which lets catalogers classify data and add pages to categories automatically.
  
  
• Verity Rebounds, Ships Document Management Duo Jim Kertetter, PCWeek Online December 7, 1998
  Describes introduction of KeyView Pro 6.5 and HTML Export 2.0, and covers corporate problems in previous quarters.
  
  
• CDnow Improves Search Tooltipworld.com Internet Daily, July 14, 1998
  Even if you can't spell "potato," new search capabilities in the music database at online retailer CDnow Inc. will make it easier for you to find your music. Using new search technology from Verity Inc., visitors to the CDnow (CDNW) site will be able to locate artists' information even if they can't spell the name correctly. "Can't find Alanis Morisette at other music stores? CDnow is the only online music store that will find you Alanis Morissette," said Chief Executive Jason Olim.
  
  
• Verity search toolkit debuts InfoWorld, April 27, 1998 by Torsten Busse
  Describes new search toolkit, Verity K2, based on multi-node symmetrical multiprocessor hardware and multithreaded OS architectures. It allows topic searches across multiple data sources and results in less than two seconds even for hundreds of thousands of documents.
  
  
• Lotus, Verity settle lawsuit, sign licensing agreement. InfoWorld Electric, June 8, 1998 by Clare Haney
  Verity had accused Lotus of breaking a license agreement and incorporating advanced search features in Lotus Notes 5.0. In the settlement, Lotus will license the KeyView filtering technology.
  
  
• K2 Aids Data Retrieval PC Week, April 24, 1998 by Christy Walker
  Describes the Verity K2 toolkit for knowledge management.
  
  
• Serving Up Quality Searches Internet Computing, March, 1998 by Kevin Railsback
  Comprehensive comparative review of AltaVista eXtension 97, Integrated I-Search 3.0, Microsoft Index Server 2.0, Innotech Net Results 1.2, Verity Search 97 Information Server and Netscape Compass 3.0 (recommended).
  
  
• Verity at TREC-6 (PostScript GZ file): NIST Special Publication 500-240: The Sixth Text REtrieval Conference (TREC 6) 1997, by J.O. Pedersen, C. Silverstein, C.C. Vogt (Verity, Inc.) p. 259-274. Describes how the Verity search engine performed in standard tests of information retrieval, specifically targeting recall quality.
  

• Summary of Site Search Packages WebReview Nov. 21, 1997
  Chart covering Excite, Microsoft Index Server, ht://Dig, Verity Search97, Netscape Catalog and SWISH.
  
  
• Serving Up Knowledge -- Products from Fulcrum and Verity can help you tap previously inaccessible information streams (TechWeb News, November 17, 1997, by Jeff Jurvis)
  Comparative review describes features: Verity's cross-platform options are an advantage, but the system is less flexible than Fulcrum.
  
  
• Internal Search Engines Get You Where You Want To Go TechWeb October 15, 1997 by Barry Nance
  Good, thorough coverage of AltaVista eXtension 97, Folio siteDirector 3.1, Ultraseek 1.1, Inmagic/Lycos, DB/Text Intranet Spider, ISYS:Web 2.0, Maxum Phantom 2.0; Microsoft Index Server 3.0, Netscape Compass 3.0, Quadralay WebWorks Search 2.0, Verity IntelliServe 1.0, freeWAIS 0.3, WebGlimpse 4.0B1 and SWISH 1.1.
  
  
• US Department of Education 1997 report on Verity Search '97
  The evaluation praises technical support, administrative interface, customization, moderate hard disk requirements. Can't do an incremental re-index of sites.
  
  
• Software Review: Verity IntelliServe 1.0 (Intranet Design Magazine, Sept. 25, 1997, by Rob Bilson.
  Thoughtful discussion of issues, CPU requirements and such.
  
  
• Verity Viewer Eyes Lotus' SmartSuite PC Week, September 5, 1997 by Jim Kerstetter
  Lotus and Verity are working together to provide access to SmartSuite documents from other applications, such as Microsoft Office, using KeyView technology.
  
  
• Buyer's Guide: Search Engines WebServer OnLine, 1997 by Lang Zerner
  Tables for platforms and configuration, indexing, document types, query languages. Covers AltaVista, Fulcrum, Microsoft Index Server, Compass (now from Netscape), PLWeb Turbo, Excalibur, Verity Search '97 and Ultraseek.
  
  
• ServerWatch Search '97 entry, dated March 1998, provides a feature list.
  
  
• Coping with Info Overload -- Verity's IntelliServ 1.0 manages mounds of information with cutting-edge search power (TechWeb News, August 18, 1997, Rich Santalesa)
  Good review and description of installing, administering and using Verity's IntelliServ 1.0 for intranets.
  
  
• Cold Fusion keeps getting better InfoWorld, July 28, 1997, by Maggie Biggs
  Review mentions that Allaire's Cold Fusion includes Verity Search '97 indexing.
  
  
• As of May, 1998, an Allaire feature list says, in part:
  "Search Engine - Transparently index and search unstructured textual data stored in relational databases as well as standard text and desktop document files with the embedded Verity SEARCH97 full-text indexing and searching engine. Create document summaries and use an optimized text query language to build intelligent search interfaces and applications. (Extensible to support indexing and searching languages in addition to English.)"
  
  
• A real find for intranet searches (review of Verity) PC Week Review, July 21,1997
  Short but thoughtful review of setup, administration and use of IntelliServ 1.0.
  
  
• Boost To Verity Fortunes? -- Netscape to use Verity search, retrieval software April 21, 1997, TechWeb News, Michael Kanellos.
  Short news article about Netscape bundling Search '97 into various web and application server configurations.
  
  
• Search'97 from Verity -- Making Text Retrieval an Application Patricia Seybold Group, 1996 by Geoffrey E. Bock. (Not available online)
  Describes features and benefits of Verity Search '97.
  
  
• Searching the HEP Web (indexing & searching with Verity)
  Instructions for the High Energy Physics web sites to install and use Verity.
  
  
• Topic PC Magazine, October 10, 1995 by Kevin Reichard
  Old but interesting review of Verity's Topic product line.

Partners

• PaperThin content management system
• ATG
• BEA
• IBM
• Oracle
• TIBCO
• Vignette
• divine
• Documentum
• Epicentric