Convera® Strengthens Focus on Vertical Search for Publishers; Announces Acquisition of RetrievalWare(TM) Business by FAST
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VIENNA, Va., April 2: Convera Corporation (NASDAQ:CNVR), www.convera.com, a leading provider of vertical search technologies to publishers, today announced that Fast Search & Transfer(TM) (Oseax: FAST.OL) (FAST( (TM)has agreed to purchase the assets of its RetrievalWare(TM) business for $23 million in cash. Under the terms of the agreement, FAST will retain Convera professionals serving its enterprise search customers. The deal enables Convera to focus its technology and professional service resources on the rapidly growing vertical search market serving specialist publishers. Convera has signed recent contracts with publishers such as John Wiley & Sons, United Business Media, Euromoney Institutional Investor and Centaur Media. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the second quarter.
Convera and FAST have also announced that Convera has licensed FAST Ad Momentum(TM), a private-label contextual advertising and monetization platform developed with the support of leading online publishers. FAST Ad Momentum will be integrated with Convera's hosted vertical search solution and its Publisher Control Panel, which enables publishers to directly manage and improve the search experience for their professional communities and pursue search-based revenues for their Web sites.
"Convera is helping several of the world's leading publishers build loyal online communities and increase their Web-based advertising revenues through our vertical search service. The sale of our enterprise business will enable us to progress more quickly in the pursuit of this market opportunity," said Patrick Condo, Convera's chief executive officer. "During this critical transition, Convera will work with FAST to ensure RetrievalWare customers continue to benefit from a world-class enterprise search solution while they prepare for technology advances that FAST will deliver."
About Convera®
Convera® is a leading provider of search technologies for professional workers. Convera has developed a unified product platform that makes sense of vast amounts of information-wherever it resides-across multiple data formats, languages and meanings. Based on proprietary technologies that extract relevant results from public and private data, Convera enables professionals to quickly retrieve exactly the information essential for action. The Convera search platform is delivered as a hosted service, software or a bundled hardware and software package. Thousands of government and business professionals in 40 countries rely on Convera search solutions to power a broad range of mission critical applications.
About FAST
FAST creates the real-time search and business intelligence solutions that are behind the scenes at the world's best-known companies with the most demanding information challenges. FAST's flexible and scalable integrated technology platform and personalized portal connects users, regardless of medium, to the relevant information they need. FAST is headquartered in Norway and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The FAST Group operates globally with presence in Europe, the United States, Asia, Australia, the Americas, and the Middle East. For further information about FAST, please visit www.fastsearch.com.
Source: Convera
CONTACT: John Severance Sheffield Marketing Partners,
+1-630-281-4097, jseverance@sheffieldcompany.com, Convera Web site: www.convera.com/
http://www.fastsearch.com/
