Lucid Imagination and Uchida Spectrum Announce Strategic Alliance for Japan and Asian Markets

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwire - May 18, 2011) - Lucid Imagination, the commercial company for Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technology, today announced a strategic alliance with Uchida Spectrum Inc. (USI), a leading Japanese provider of enterprise information analysis applications.

USI will integrate LucidWorks Enterprise into its products, and will offer Lucid Imagination's Lucene/Solr subscription services. The two companies will also collaborate on product and market development focusing on e-commerce and cloud computing solutions in Japan and Asia.

USI provides SMART InSight, a search-based application used by many Fortune 500 companies, such as Canon and Moody's. SMART InSight integrates information from across the enterprise in easy-to-navigate cross department information chains, and adds visual summaries that add value through contextual metadata and analytics. It is used for applications such as quality assurance, research and development, product development, claims and customer management. Current users are large multi-nationals in various sectors, including electronics, automotive, chemicals, finance and engineering.

"As a pioneer of search-based applications, Uchida Spectrum has been very successful in Japan with SMART InSight. We are excited about working with Lucid Imagination to expand our business into new sectors such as e-commerce and Web 2.0 services for the coming era of cloud computing, and to new Asian emerging countries beyond Japan," said Mack K. Machida, CEO of Uchida Spectrum, Inc.

In 2011 USI expanded its offerings for enterprise search and web services/e-commerce companies across Asia. USI now serves clients and partners in Japan, India, China and Singapore.

"Our strategic partnership with Uchida Spectrum will help us reach more customers in Japan and Asia by combining our powerful, cost-effective enterprise search platform with USI's enterprise information analysis applications. With this solution, organizations will be able to unlock the value of the growing volumes of corporate data," said Eric Gries, CEO of Lucid Imagination.

USI will replace an existing embedded search based on Microsoft FAST ESP with LucidWorks Enterprise -- the search platform from Lucid Imagination built on Apache Solr/Lucene open source technology that accelerates and simplifies the development of highly accurate, scalable, and cost-effective search applications. USI found that LucidWorks Enterprise offered significant performance, scalability, efficiency, and cost advantages compared with other alternatives.

About Lucid Imagination

Lucid Imagination is the commercial company exclusively dedicated to Apache Solr/Lucene open source enterprise search technology. It provides search solution development platforms built on the power of Solr/Lucene open source search via enterprise-grade subscriptions. The company's latest offering, LucidWorks Enterprise, makes the power of Solr/Lucene open source search more accessible to the broad range of application developers and slashes the learning curve for search solution development. Unlike "black box" products, LucidWorks Enterprise allows organizations of all sizes and types to continuously tune their search to fit the ongoing needs of their users and achieve a consistently lower cost of growth. Lucid Imagination also offers free software for developers, documentation, commercial-grade support, high-level consulting, and comprehensive training. Customers include AT&T, Sears, Ford, Verizon, Cisco, Zappos, Raytheon, The Guardian, The Smithsonian Institution, Salesforce.com, The Motley Fool, Qualcomm, Taser, eHarmony, and many other household names around the world. Lucid Imagination is a privately held venture-funded company. The investors include Shasta Ventures, Granite Ventures, Walden International, and In-Q-Tel. Learn more about the company at www.lucidimagination.com.

About Uchida Spectrum

Uchida Spectrum is a joint venture between Uchida Yoko and Insight Enterprise, Inc. Uchida Spectrum was established in 1995 and is headquartered in Tokyo. Uchida Spectrum is one of the largest software resellers and providers of license management services in Japan. Uchida Spectrum customers include about 500 of the Fortune 2000 companies in Japan.

Uchida Spectrum, Inc. is a leader in the Asian search market. USI provides SMART InSight®, a search application that integrates and analyzes information with an enterprise search engine. SMART InSight is used by many Fortune 2000 companies for horizontal solutions such as knowledge management and specialized industry applications such as quality assurance.

For more information, go to http://spectrum.co.jp/en/companyprofile.html.