FAST Holds First Annual Gathering Of Search Thought Leaders And Innovators At Enterprise Search Summit New York, NY, March 31 /PRNewswire/ -- - Eight Global Organizations Honoured with "FAST Thinking" Awards for Demonstrating the Most Innovative Business Applications of Enterprise Search Technology Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), the leading developer of enterprise search and real-time filtering technologies, announced that eight organizations were named as recipients of the "FAST Thinking" awards at the FAST Search Leaders' Summit held recently at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. FAST's first annual Search Leaders' Summit offered attendees a forum where best practices on the most diverse applications ofenterprise search could be shared. The Summit also provided innovators and experts in the enterprise search market an opportunity to share a more strategic view of enterprise search, exchange ideas, discuss future possibilities, and take this knowledge to drive improvements in their own search implementations. "For many organizations, enterprise search is still synonymous with intranet or Web site search, and is often viewed as 'point solutions' within an organization. As these organizations begin to realize the full potential of deploying enterprise search at the very heart of their enterprise, FAST is working with its leading clients and partners to reshape and lead the market with new and innovative ways to apply search technology that simply haven't been imagined before," commented John M. Lervik, FAST's chief executive officer. "With the FAST Search Leaders' Summit, we are fostering innovation in the enterprise search market by providing a much needed business-focused forum where industry experts and thought leaders can share best practices and ideas for the purpose of further advancing the ways in which enterprise search technology is used." FAST Thinkers At this year's FAST Search Summit, representatives from organizations including CareerBuilder.com, IBM.com, IBM Japan, Rakuten, LexisNexis, Reuters, and Virgilio were presented with 'FAST Thinking Awards' in recognition of deploying the most innovative applications of enterprise search technology. The FAST Enterprise Search Platform (FAST ESP) allowed these companies to find new ways to attack existing or new business demands, while also helping them to gain value from streams of formerly untapped information. From a wide variety of perspectives, FAST ESP offers organizations such as these, countless new opportunities for tremendous business growth by boosting the value of data that exists within and outside the enterprise. By taking full advantage of this data, organizations find that they are able to dramatically increase their revenues and lower costs with little to no impact on their existing infrastructure. "We are pleased to see that a growing number of companies are choosing to deploy FAST's scalable search solutions for some very unique mission-critical applications," added Lervik. Examples of the innovative applications of FAST ESP by this year's recipients include the following: - A major eCommerce site is now able to update more than 500 products per second and has enabled near real-time bidding through effective implementation of enterprise search technology. As a result, the site has reduced the amount of hardware required by 66%, while simultaneously tripling the peak number of queries per second capability - A major media news outlet is monitoring and detecting intellectual property infringements and breaches of contract by its millions of news subscribers -A major content publisher is using FAST ESP to provide industry-specific research for its customers, allowing users to search from the Web and from internal databases simultaneously - fully utilizing its most valuable assets - the intellectual property and collective expertise already residing within the firm - Italy's largest portal site developed and launched a new search product in just under four months, aggregating its own disparate sources with results from a leading Web search engine. This approach to federated search allowed the portal to deliver the most relevant search results to its visitors, regaining a leadership position and rapidly growing its bottom line - A leading online employment and recruiting site included FAST ESP at the centre of its business model for doubling growth. Now, after experiencing four times thisplanned growth rate, it handles up to 500 queries per second and delivers results in less than a second. - FAST ESP has increased revenue and return on investment for one of the world's busiest eCommerce sites. FAST ESP enables this company to process an unlimited number of queries against a rapidly growing data volume and quickly deliver targeted search results to its customers on the first click. This company now handles an average of 450,000 queries a day and is poised for continued growth. Running on low-cost, high performance servers, FAST ESP provides organizations such as these with a 360-degree view of relevant structured data stored in databases, as well as the unstructured data of documents, emails, presentations, Web pages,and more. Whether data exists in multiple databases and applications, on corporate intranets, or on the Web, FAST ESP provides unlimited access and scalability in data volume, number of users, and freshness of data. It also enables organizations to draw one complete, accurate, secure, and intelligent view of all the information they need to advance the fortunes of the enterprise. FAST ESP is offered by FAST though the FAST Data Search suite of enterprise search solutions, which includes FAST Data Search for Site Search; FAST Data Search for Compliance; FAST Data Search for eCommerce; FAST Data Search for Intranets; and FAST Data Search 360. The FAST Data Search product suite supplies a complete information retrieval solution ideal for key vertical markets and applications including e-Commerce and Internet Portals, Financial Services; Government; Life Sciences; Media and Publishing; and Telecom. About FAST FAST creates the real-time search and filter technology solutions that are behind the scenes at the world's best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST's flexible and scalable integrated technology platform elevates the search capabilities of enterprise customers and connects people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium. This drives revenues and reduces total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure. FAST's powerful enterprise search technology solutions are used by a wide range of global customers and partners, including AT&T, Cardinal Health, CareerBuilder.com, Chordiant, CIGNA, CNET, Dell, Fidelity Investments, FirstGov.gov (GSA), Freeserve, IBM, LexisNexis, Overture, Rakuten, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Tenet Healthcare, Thomas Industrial Network, T-Online, US Army, Virgilio (Telecom Italia), and Vodafone. FAST operates globally with presence in the United States, Europe, and Japan. FAST is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Please visit www.fastsearch.com for more information. (c) 2004 Fast Search & Transfer ASA - Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, FAST Data Search, FAST ESP and the FAST four-colored logo are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. All rights reserved. FAST disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. DATASOURCE: Fast Search & Transfer ASA Contact: Andrew Clough, FAST, Tel. +47 23 01 12 59, Mob. +47 48 01 12 59, Email: andrew.clough@fast.no

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