Oracle reports it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Stellent through a cash tender offer for $13.50 per share, roughly $440 million.

Oracle says the acquisition will complement and extend its existing content management solution portfolio, Oracle Content Database, which enables enterprises to store and centrally manage unstructured content in Oracle databases. Stellent's Universal Content Management solution is compatible with Oracle Content Database and offers solutions for document management; Web content management; information rights management; digital asset management; records and retention management; imaging; and governance, risk and compliance.

KMWorld will publish an analysis of the impact of the deal on the marketplace in our Jan. 2007 issue.

Siderean Software, a provider of faceted navigation solutions, has announced the availability of Seamark Navigator 4.1. Seamark Navigator 4.1 is designed to enable enterprise users to discover and use enterprise and web-based information available for decision-making. The upgraded enterprise navigation solution features a number of visualization enhancements to interactively present relationships, analyses, and trends.

The latest version of Seamark Navigator applies advanced analytics to compute sums, averages, maximums, and minimums over numeric facet values, enabling enterprise users to survey and track aggregated results from multiple data repositories at a glance. Seamark Navigator 4.1 also incorporates hierarchical clustering and entity-level security. New features and functionalities include: robust analytics capabilities, including chart support, table support and date/time support; point and click Navigation Builder for increased flexibility; point and click Information Feed Support for RDBMS, LDAP, and Web Service protocols; standards-based SPARQL support for querying disparate data sources; hierarchical clustering to allow exponential increase in scalability; data provenance and role-based security; and Tag Library support for enhancing user customization.

(www.siderean.com)

Inxight's Federal Systems Group has joined forces with Government Micro Resources (GMRI), a wholly owned subsidiary of PC Mall Gov, to supply the Inxight SmartDiscovery platform, providing natural language processing and text analytics to a U.S. intelligence agency for counterterrorism activities.

GMRI reports it provides IT products, services and solutions to the federal government, specializing in enterprise storage, e-commerce, Web application development, enterprise operations, as well information and infrastructure assurance.

Inxight says LinguistX Platform provides advanced text analysis capabilities in more than 30 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Farsi. The text is then extracted using Inxight SmartDiscovery's ThingFinder engine, which automatically tags more than 35 entity types, including names, facilities, weapons, vehicles, geo-coordinates, dates, e-mails, etc.

Attensity has introduced what it says is the market's first complete text analytics suite. Attensity 4 includes new methods of searching, querying, charting and graphing freeform text dynamically in a browser-based interface.

Features include:

• unified architecture--all applications are integrated and use common commands;
• improved discovery and analytics--freeform text exploration has been significantly enhanced;
• new text search offering embedded into workflow--search results can be viewed as links to documents ranked by relevancy, to hot spots of prevalent text strings inside documents, and to other relevant words;
• a "manage" module--classifies users as either administrators, authors or read-only viewers for enhanced security;
• "breadcrumbs"--a horizontal trail of links appears across the top of the page;
• enhancements to the existing extraction engine library;
• expansion of entity libraries in an atomic architecture; and
• categorization for "nested" hierarchies to organize and report on fact analysis of text.

Attensity 4 works inside, alongside or outside an organization's current business intelligence applications. It will initially support MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, the Teradata data warehouse and Oracle. The first operating systems supported will be Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Linux.

SearchInform Technologies Inc. has introduced a new version of SearchInform, a program of full text search and search for documents similar in their content, featuring new interface settings as well as an enhanced indexing and information search algorithms and a modified functional. New functions of SearchInform 3.0.03 include: upgraded information search and indexing algorithms; improvements in the way the program works with the index and TheBat! mail client; the ability for the user to set file description columns in the results window; the ability for the user to modify the number of columns shown, their location, and headings.

Features of SearchInform 3.0.03 include: phrase search with due consideration to stemming and thesaurus; new SoftInform Search Technology of search for similar documents; indexing speed (from 15 to 30 Gb/hour); index size of 15-25% from the actual size of the text data; query caching system; support of over 60 text formats, Outlook and TheBat electronic messages, mp3 and avi tags, and logs of MSN and ICQ instant messaging programs; correct work with archives; and universal data sources (indexing of DBMS).

(www.searchinform.com)

Factiva has introduced an enhanced version of its Taxonomy Warehouse, a community directory and information source for taxonomies, thesauri and classification schemes. It is said to provide enterprises, as well as academic and government organizations, the information required to categorize internal and external data collections and ensure that relevant answers to search queries are found with speed and precision, Factiva reports.

Factiva explains that enhancements to Taxonomy Warehouse include:

• the addition of more than 100 new taxonomies, including: Alternative Medicine, American Industries, Business, Energy, Explosives and Related Items, Genetic Disorders, Health, Safety and Environmental Data and Public Health;
• a newly designed Web site featuring easier navigation among taxonomies and classification schemes;
• a new A-Z index for easy browsing;
• a new search function that enables users to find vocabularies, publishers and categories using keywords of their choice;
• up-to-date information about taxonomy references, resources, latest news and events; and
• links to professional associations and organizations for solutions to a company's taxonomy needs.

ClearForest, a provider of text analytics solutions, has announced ClearForest Modeler, a tool designed to enable business users to create text extraction solutions. The results are modules that are used to transform free form text into structured tables in a relational database or XML tags.

ClearForest Modeler takes sample documents as input, processes them, and then generates a suggested list of relevant terms, statistically significant terms, and term generalizations. The user provides feedback by excluding terms and assigning elements to user-defined entity types. ClearForest Modeler combines statistical techniques with sophisticated linguistics (e.g. the identification of parts-of-speech, stems, polarity, and word phrases). Modules created in ClearForest Modeler are upward compatible to this development environment.

ClearForest Modeler is part of the 7.1 release of the ClearForest Text Analytics Platform. ClearForest Modeler is immediately available and can be purchased directly from ClearForest.

(www.clearforest.com)

Centric Software has released InSight 6.0, which it describes as an off-the-shelf product intelligent search application. The offering is designed to discover and classify all structured and unstructured product information stored behind the firewall in disparate, enterprisewide systems. InSight further expedites access to product documents, technical drawings, bills of material, ERP records and other content.

The company says InSight discovers and classifies results based on common product attributes from multiple systems, such as CAD, PLM, PDM and ERP systems, as well as office documents, PDFs and e-mail files, says Centric. Features include comparisons of results, multiple options to manage results and respect for established network and data security restrictions that protect document sources, only allowing access based on roles.

Centric claims that for engineering and manufacturing teams in automotive, aerospace and consumer goods, InSight 6.0 expedites just-in-time access to technical drawings, manuals and other documents for parts manufacturing, parts reuse or part replacement. The company adds that the software recognizes duplicate results, categorizes results against data types and gives users options to navigate through un-indexed document relationships. To manage results, users can select to share documents or organize them in a project folder for secure sharing with a cross-functional team over the Internet. Selected unmanaged files instantly become manageable with the automatic assignment of revision control identity and population of relevant data management tags.

IBM has introduced a fully-integrated and scalable data warehouse solution for Linux that combines software, server, and storage resources for business intelligence and information management performance for enterprises. The IBM Data Warehousing Balanced Configuration Unit for Linux (BCU) combines DB2 Data Warehouse Edition, and eServer 326m running on either SUSE or Red Hat Linux with TotalStorage DS4800.

This solution is targeted at enterprise data warehouses that require an infrastructure solution optimized for scalability, manageability, fault-tolerance, and performance. Additionally, the Balanced Configuration Unit for Linux delivers support for archiving, integrating, and analyzing data. The new Balanced Configuration Unit is designed around best practices of creating a balanced performance through the use of modular nodes, or building blocks. The IBM Data Warehousing Balanced Configuration Unit for Linux is currently available from IBM.

(www.ibm.com/bi)

Convera has released RetrievalWare 8.2, which offers more than a dozen performance and productivity enhancements.

Some of the new RetrievalWare 8.2 capabilities include:

Distributed indexing--increased performance for large document collections using distributed, parallelized indexing and configurable real-time alerting.

Security--new access control plug-in allows for custom document level security implementations and real-time validation. Proxy login through Web services facilitates portal integration.

Search interface--search interface deployed as 100% pure Web services and delivered as a reference application for quickly developing customized applications.

Migration--new tools for easy migration from earlier versions of the software.

Platform support--added platforms and database support, including SQL 2005, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10 and Red Hat AS 4.

ISYS Search Software, a global supplier of enterprise search solutions for business and government, has announced increased adoption of its ISYS:sdk application by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Recent OEM partners include Astea International, Metafile Information Systems, Obor Digital, Overtone Software, and Scentric.

(www.isys-search.com)

Recommind, an enterprise search and categorization company, has announced that its flagship MindServer 4.2 information access platform provides full enterprise search integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The integration is designed to enable Recommind and Microsoft customers to implement Recommind enterprise search with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and establish an information hub.

MindServer 4.2 is the latest release of Recommind's flagship MindServer enterprise information access platform. MindServer transforms high volumes of discrete files, documents, and messages contained in enterprise management systems, HR, time and billing systems, CRM, and contact management systems into manageable information relevant to a user's specific purpose. As documents change and new information is added, MindServer automatically updates data. For enterprises, the MindServer 4.2 platform delivers information access and usability.

(www.recommind.com)

Attensity reports it will partner with IBM to support the new IBM Information Server to help mutual customers derive more value from the information across their IT systems.

Attensity explains that it will work with IBM to develop integrated solutions that support IBM Information Server and provide a scalable framework for cleansing, transforming and delivering both structured and unstructured information consistently and securely throughout the enterprise. IBM claims its Information Server helps companies integrate any and all enterprise data so it can be accessed and used in new ways to drive innovation, increase operational efficiency and lower risk, says IBM.

Attensity further says its Text Analytics suite derives all facts found in unstructured data using its Exhaustive Extraction technology, which Attensity calls "ETL for text." These facts are then handed off to the IBM Information Server for additional ETL processing, such as data cleansing and de-duplication, and then placed into the data warehouse.

Coveo Solutions Inc., a provider of secure search for the enterprise, has announced that it has secured $6 million through a Series A Preferred venture capital financing agreement. The investment was led by Solidarity Fund QFL and Propulsion Ventures. This funding round also included investments from Fier Succes and existing investors of the company lead by Accès Capital. The additional round of funding enables Coveo to expand sales, product development, and channel operations to meet the growing demand for its product. Coveo has also announced that Benoit Hogue, managing partner, Propulsion Ventures, and Serge Michaud, senior investment advisor, information technologies, Solidarity Fund QFL, have been appointed to serve on the company's board of directors.

(www.coveo.com; www.fondsftq.com; www.propulsionventures.com; www.acces.com; www.fiersucces.com)

Brad Greenspan, the founder of MySpace, has acquired a majority stake in Flurl.com, an independent video search website, which indexes over 1000 online video sites. With this acquisition, LiveUniverse intends to begin discussions with potential strategic, financial, and content partners focused in the online video space. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Flurl does not solely rely on RSS feeds but also indexes media sites through manual HTML pattern matching. This is designed to allow more detailed and accurate results. In addition to video, Flurl also indexes images, audio, and flash content.

(www.liveuniverse.com; www.flurl.com)

Google has acquired JotSpot, an application wiki company. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Google has also announced the release of a new mobile client, Gmail for mobile devices. The freely downloadable Java application delivers Gmail users the look and feel of Gmail through an interface that's optimized for handheld devices.

Gmail users can already access their accounts through the browser on their mobile devices, but this application brings users the experience--complete with search, conversation view, and automatic synchronization with the desktop version--with the following new benefits: up to five times faster access and use, automatic pre-fetching of messages; reduced clicks and scrolling to access email; fewer keystrokes for reading, composing, or searching mail; and attachments, including files and photos, viewable and automatically re-sized to fit the user's phone. Users can go to gmail.com/app from their mobile browser to download the app. If users don't already have a Gmail account, they can sign up for an account via SMS by going to gmail.google.com and clicking on "sign up for Gmail." The application is available completely free of charge from Google (carrier mobile data charges may still apply). It is currently compatible with all J2ME-enabled phones in the U.S. and works with a variety of carrier service plans.

(www.google.com; www.jotspot.com)