G-Men Select Convera

Search specialist Convera has won a new contract with the FBI, a customer it will highlight when pitching security-minded agencies and corporations.

The Vienna, Va., company’s RetrievalWare will be used for a new Investigative Data Warehouse, a counter-terrorism database available to several agencies.

“This is an extremely big win for other customers concerned with security,” spokeswoman Anna Van Lier told internetnews.com “The FBI is one of the foremost authorities on security and being selected by them, particularly for mission-critical national security initiatives, is an honor.”

Convera was recommended for the contract by Mitre, a nonprofit with roots at MIT that provides IT services and consulting for the federal government.

Van Lier said Convera beat out competitors for the contract, but declined to identify them.

It’s the first time Convera has done business with the FBI, but it’s no stranger to Washington. The company recently reported that business from the federal government rose 167 percent during the second quarter.

It currently provides search technology to NASA, the Department of Defense, Federal Trade Commission, IRS, Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And though it doesn’t offer specifics, Convera also said the “intelligence community” is a customer.

Among RetrievalWare’s features that are attractive to the FBI are is multimedia search. Agents can search a variety of forms representing: surveillance videotapes; forensic reports such as blood, fingerprint and DNA; automated case files; credit card transactions; terrorist watch lists; wiretaps; bank records; credit card transactions; automated case files; and even local law enforcement arrest reports.

Although there are few areas as hot as paid search, enterprise search is also seeing steady growth. A number of sectors including financial services, pharmaceuticals, automotive and the federal government are using the technology to organize and manage information for employees and customers.

In other search news today, iPhrase said its One Step natural language product has been selected by NASDAQ.com to help investors find information.

The privately held, Cambridge, Mass., company said its analytic tools were among the factors that helped it win the stock market’s business. Financial details were not released.

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