November 5th, 2007

Exalead – A Uniquely Satisfying Search Experience

The Economic Department of the French Embassy in Singapore held it’s twice yearly informal gathering known as @periTIC on October 31st at the Embassy to promote networking and information exchange between French, Singaporean and other ICT experts. The event focused on a presentation of “Trends in Enterprise Search” and outlined the current trends we should expect to see in search within the enterprise and online in the coming years by Exalead.

The guest speakers were Mr. Guillaume Mainbourg, Assistant Managing Director and CEO of European enterprise search software leader EXALEAD S.A. and Mr. Jean Garez, Director of Business Development for Singapore technology distributor, Asia Technical Services Pte Ltd (ATS).

Founded in 2000 by search-engine pioneers, Exalead is a global provider of search software for business and the Web. Based on the first and only unified search technology platform for desktop, intranet or Web search, Exalead’s products provide users with a single access point to information, regardless of format or location. Its patented Search by Serendipity® navigation system adapts to user habits for a less frustrating and uniquely satisfying search experience. Exalead is an operating unit of Qualis SCA, an international holding company with over €1 Billion annual turnover, with offices in Paris, New York, San Francisco, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Milan and is distributed in Singapore and the region by ATS.

“The founders of Exalead have always believed that the process of searching for and retrieving information on the Web or in the data stores of public and commercial companies have been harder than it needs to be”. And having been recognized for the 2nd year in a row by leading industry research firm Gartner Inc. in its Magic Quadrant1 for Information Access Technology, we must be doing something right”, said Mr. Guillaume Mainbourg.

Mr. Garez had the following to say about the challenges faced by corporations today: “The management of information is often considered in vertical terms, with systems in place that structure information by business process or by corporate division, etc. This addresses a very real need as incoherent processes in a business environment can seriously impede productivity and growth. What is lacking today, however, is a simple way to view information horizontally within an enterprise.”

“Exalead offers every individual - from the new assistant to the CEO – a single point of access to quickly search across a corporation’s disparate data sources just as they would the web. Not only is the information secured, but Exalead’s unique patented navigation system, known as Search by Serendipty©, allows users to finally make sense of the results they get back and simply drill down through their results by clicking on logical categories and keywords which are generated on the fly”.

Exalead Employs over 100 employees worldwide, with revenues of over €4 million in 2006, this company is growing from strength to strength. They already have a web presence (www.exalead.com) with over 8 Billion pages indexed, putting Exalead amongst the top 3 most pages indexed on the web. They even have a free desktop search tool that rivals the best of them out there, allowing you to make sense of your own content. You can see why some of the big players IBM and HP have included Exalead as partner and why it continues to win awards; Red Herring 100 Europe; a Codie Award finalist; Web 2.0 awards honorable mention, KM Trend Setting Product of 2006.

Said Mr. Garez, “Exalead is still a young company but has proven to be a formidable competitor against some of the legacy players out there”, with respected clients such as Louis Vuitton, AOL France, Air Liquide, the Italian Ministry of Finance, American Greetings Interactive, Bouygues Telecom, the Manchester University School of Medicine, the French Ministry of Research and New Technologies, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Astra Zeneca, the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute and many others. “We see a hotbed of opportunity in Singapore and look forward to expanding our efforts in 2008 to make Exalead a serious player here and in throughout the Asia Pacific region.”

For further information or details on how you can try out the Exalead product please email Mr. Jean Garez at jdg@asiatechserv.net or call 62351679.

1 Gartner, Inc., " Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology 2007" by Whit Andrews, Sept. 5, 2007