Inktomi inks search engine deals

Inktomi Corp. announced Aug.21 that it has signed agreements to provide its search technology to a smorgasbord of new federal customers.

The Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory, the Federal Communications Commission, the Library of Congress, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the departments of Veterans Affairs and Agriculture all signed on to use Inktomi's Enterprise Search software.

The company's information retrieval platform enables government workers, contractors and the public to quickly retrieve relevant information contained anywhere across intranets, extranets and public sites.

Financial terms and the actual signing dates of the deals were not disclosed, but the agencies are all new customers for Inktomi, company spokeswoman Julie Keslik said.

Troy Toman, vice president and general manager of Inktomi Search Solutions, said federal agencies "must ensure that documents can be easily accessed and retrieved with minimal IT resources...[and] enterprise search software delivers accurate search results from information stored in multiple data formats and locations."

Inktomi currently provides enterprise search functions for many federal and state agencies, including the departments of State, Interior, Commerce, Transportation, Education, Navy and the Executive Office of the President.

Inktomi has also been providing free search capability to the General Services Administration's FirstGov portal, but the government must start paying for FirstGov's search capability by August 2003. Officials there are seeking suggestions for a replacement search engine and the Inktomi engine will be among those considered, FirstGov officials told Federal Computer Week last month.