Apache Lucene/Solr Powers New Media Business Models 

20 May 2010, Prague, Czech Republic Lucid Imagination and Guardian News and Media today announced that the Guardian‘s Open Platform, commercially launched today, http://tiny.cc/jc06p, is powered by Solr, the Lucene Enterprise Search Server. During development of the Content API, the Guardian tapped Lucid Imagination's deep expertise with Solr and related technologies, unlocking the Guardian’s content for new online commercial service models. 

Through Lucid’s efforts, the Guardian got the assurance it needed that the innovative platform would deliver predictable, consistent, high-performance scalable results. The Guardian deployed the Open Platform and its Solr open source enterprise search implementation in the Amazon EC2 cloud.

"Solr provides high speed, flexible access to our data resources, with the technology we need to open our content asset base to an ever-growing network of partners, content contributors and app developers", said Derek Gannon, Director of Operations, of Guardian News and Media. "Working with the experts at Lucid Imagination enables us to accelerate with confidence in rolling out innovations we know will support our business model and help reshape the media marketplace." 

"We're excited to be working with The Guardian on this next generation platform. Their leading-edge innovation is consistent with what we see in the adoption of Lucene/Solr in Europe and around the world," said Eric Gries, CEO of Lucid Imagination. "More and more often, organizations are turning to open source Lucene/Solr application development to unlock opportunities hidden in the massive streams of data and content available to their organizations; more and more are turning to Lucid Imagination to ensure that innovation delivers predictable, cost-effective search implementations." 

Today in Prague at The Apache Lucene EuroCon (www.lucene-eurocon.org), the inaugural session of Europe's largest open source search application developer conference, Stephen Dunn, Head of Technology Strategy, Guardian News and Media, delivered a keynote address highlighting the latest innovations in the Open Platform. The keynote was followed by an in-depth technical briefing for developers by Graham Tackley, the Guardian's Lead Software Engineer - who explained exactly how the team achieved the goal of launching this new platform with rapid indexing, simple scalability and zero downtime for near-continuous updates in content using Solr. 

Moving ahead, Lucid Imagination will be working with The Guardian to provide expertise for rapid innovation in rolling out new applications based on Solr/Lucene; to tap cloud-based deployment strategies; to improve scalability and reduce risks while lowering the costs of deployment; and to better integrate the Lucene/Solr technology in the Guardian's operating environment. 

For more information on the Guardian's Open Platform initiative visit: www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform

For further information on Lucid Imagination and Solr, visit: www.lucidimagination.com