Open Source Search is gaining more and more traction. First you had Lucene (2001), giving great search for programmers. Then we got Solr (2006) making search accessible for non programmers, but a certain level of expertise is still needed. And then came Constellio, an open source (GPL) enterprise search distribution (distro) built on Solr, adding a slick GUI, connector and crawling support and more.

Say again. A Solr distro?

I call it “distro” because I like to compare the evolution to what we have seen in GNU/Linux. First there was the Linux core. Then there was the GNU tools that made Linux so much more usable but still only for engineers comfortable with the command line. And last, companies like RedHat and Suse built complete distros including modern GUI, ready-to use tools such as OpenOffice, Thunderbird and more. Without these distros, Linux would just have been a “core” leaving to the user to add the extra sugar. (more…)

A considerable part of Cominvent’s projects the last years have been migrations from FAST ESP to Solr. Some customers have a cost saving focus while others need a search engine on Linux. Anyhow, with more than 10 years of FAST experience, Cominvent is an authority in this field, securing a smooth transition.

As an example, we recently migrated the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Næringsliv and several other online newspapers from FAST to Solr, including Norwegian linguistics and Escenic integration.

Our friends in Lucid Imagination will host a free webinar on this topic on November 18th, don’t miss it if you want to hear more success stories.

Also see our migration slides.

Jan Høydahl will be speaking at Lucene EuroCon in Prague May 20-21st 2010. EuroCon is a new annual conference hosted by Lucid Imagination. In this event the majority of the Lucene/Solr community will come together discussing how search can improve findability & revenue for various types of businesses.

Jan will be speaking about “Key topics when migrating from FAST to Solr”, pitched towards a Solr audience. There will be a short overview of FAST ESP, and a walkthrough of the migration process including what pain-points you could expect and how to handle them.

Welcome to join Cominvent and FindWise in a breakfast seminar in Oslo May 5th, with the topic “Cost effective and flexible search solutions based on open source”.

The seminar is at Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel in Oslo, between 8-10am wednesday May 5th.

Join us for a discussion around these topics:

• What is open source and how does it affect search technology?
• How does Solr/Lucene really work?
• What alternatives are there within Solr/Lucene?

We’ll also present a few customer cases to highlight successful implementation of open source enterprise search.

See the attached invitation (PDF, Norwegian) for more.

Sign up now