Inktomi Corp. was busy Wednesday
playing host to three diverse deals.
Perhaps most important was its Search Everywhere play, which is an aim to
deliver the a suite of search solutions to corporate and wireless customers.
The initiative aims to remove critical barriers between previously isolated intranet, extranet, site and Web
search applications.
Specifically, it will allow its search engine to be accessed by intranets and
extranets from exisiting clients such as
America Online Inc., Hewlett-Packard Inc.
and Sun Microsystems Inc.
The Search Everywhere deal was forged with help from Inktomi’s
acquisition of Ultraseek Corp. for $344.7 million in June. Through
Ultraseek, Inktomi has gained the ability to help enterprise customers to
outsource the administration and hosting of search for their intranets and
public Web sites.
It was also given life by Inktomi’s agreement Wednesday with Digital Rights
Management solution specialist MediaDNA, which enables firms to unlock
the door to millions of content pages that are normally unsearchable. For
those that need to probe pseudo-classified content MediaDNA’s
eLuminator™ helps firms search protected content that may be buried
behind a firewall, in non-HTML formats such as Adobe Acrobat PDF files, or
protected with DRM
technologies such as MediaDNA eMediator™.
eLuminator an unusual application because while the search engine has the
benefit of full-text searching, the content owners rights and revenues are
in no way jeopardized, solving the problem content owners face in sealing
off content without making it invisble to searchers.
“Working with MediaDNA, Inktomi will be able to provide the end user with
better search results while helping publishers of valuable online content
reach a wider market,” said Andy Feit, vice president of marketing for
Inktomi Search Solutions.
For its third deal, Inktomi looked to the east by signing up Mitsubishi Electric Corp., which wants
to integrate and distribute Inktomi’s Traffic Server™ network cache
platform, Content Delivery Suite® software and Media-IXT®
streaming media cache to ISPs, access and hosting providers, content
delivery networks and enterprises in Japan. Mitsubishi will also distribute
Inktomi’s search technology to portals, destination sites and enterprises.
Mitsubishi maintains the deal is vital to its expansion. Koichi Kobayashi,
corporate vice president, from Mitsubishi Electric Corp., said the deal was
inked as a backbone for his firm’s launch of Traffic One Communications, a
new Internet business subsidiary scheduled to open its doors in early
October.
Financial terms for Inktomi’s three deals were not made public.
However, Inktomi
President and Chief Executive Officer David Peterschmidt alluded to Wednesday’s moves in the enterprise market in an interview conducted at the Bank of America Securities Investment conference on Tuesday. He discussed a strategy shift in customer base in
the past three months.
He said the Internet is being taxed more and more by enterprise customers
using information at work.
“What we’ve seen in the last 90 days is that our traffic server product has
gone from about 5 percent to 20 to 30 percent to enterprise bookings,”
Peterschmidt said. He also said ISP hosting is expanding, expanding
Inktomi’s products geographically.
Peterschmidt said he didn’t think Inktomi would sap business from
enterprise applications firms, but that his firm is adding a much more
efficient way of grabbing information.
He also said buying live broadcasting firm FastForward for $1.3 billion last week
will enable Inktomi’s caching products to incorporate complete streaming
capabilities for clients, a detail absent in other streaming media firms.
The deal is consistent with Inktomi’s strategy to boost its ability to
deliver digital radio and TV broadcasting over the Web.
