It is with some pride that we announce we’ve finally made it onto the Autonomy web site as an Asia-Pacific Value Added Reseller. There’s some satisfaction in this - we couldn’t manage a listing on the Inktomi web site when Ultraseek was known as Inktomi Enterprise Search (although to be fair, they had more pressing things on their mind during that period), and neither could we manage a listing on Verity’s web site, (before they were acquired by Autonomy).

Click here to see the Autonomy listing.

Here’s a canned history:

• April 2002 - First Hit commences trading, with a single focus on Inktomi Enterprise Search. Inktomi doesn’t do much with IES, a couple of point releases at the v5.0.x level.
• September 2002 - We start promoting ContentKeeper Internet Filtering. What a great product! Right out of the blocks, it was a clear winner. We’ve had many happy ContentKeeper customers since then and no disappointments.
• January 2003 - Inktomi sells IES to Verity Inc, who promptly gives it back its original name (Ultraseek). Verity added a lot of functionality - the initial Verity release was v5.0.4, the final was v5.4.2. First Hit retained its focus on Ultraseek - there were other products in the Verity stable, but we felt products such as K2 Enterprise were best left alone.
• January 2006 - Verity is acquired by Autonomy. Ultraseek is retained as Autonomy’s entry-level search offering, K2 Enterprise as the high-end keyword search offering, and Autonomy’s own IDOL server product suite as mid-high end concept-based search. I know this is a simplistic view, but it’s good enough for today’s post. The current Autonomy product range is awesome, and First Hit has moved aggressively into the IDOL marketspace to take advantage of what is perhaps the most complete information retrieval product suite from any vendor, anywhere.