Lucid Imagination Search Product Offered in Windows Azure Marketplace
From the post:
Ease of use and flexibility are two key business drivers that are fueling the rapid adoption of cloud computing. The ability to disconnect an application from its supporting architecture provides a new level of business agility that has never before been possible. To ease the move towards this new realm of computing, integrated platforms have begun emerge that make cloud computing easier to adopt and leverage.
Lucid Imagination, a trusted name in Search, Discovery and Analytics, today announced that its LucidWorks Cloud product has been selected by Microsoft Corp. to be offered as a Search-as-a-Service product in Microsoft’s Windows Azure Marketplace. LucidWorks Cloud is a full cloud service version of its LucidWorks Enterprise platform. LucidWorks Cloud delivers full open source Apache Lucene/Solr community innovation with support and maintenance from the world’s leading experts in open source search. An extensible platform architected for developers, LucidWorks Cloud is the only Solr distribution that provides security, abstraction and pre-built connectors for essential enterprise data sources – along with dramatic ease of use advantages in a well-tested, integrated and documented package.
Example use cases for LucidWorks Cloud include Search-as-a-Service for websites, embedding search into SaaS product offerings, and Prototyping and developing cloud-based search-enabled applications in general.
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Highlights of LucidWorks Cloud Search-as-a-Service
- Sign-up for a plan and start building your search application in minute
- Well-organized UI makes Apache Lucene/Solr innovation easier to consume and more adaptable to constant change
- Create multiple search collections and manage them independently
- Configure index and query settings, fields, stop words, synonyms for each collection
- Built-in support for Hadoop, Microsoft SharePoint and traditional online content types
- An open connector framework is available to customize access to other data sources
- REST API automates and integrates search as a service with an application
- Well-instrumented dashboard for infrastructure administration, monitoring and reporting
- Monitored 24×7 by Lucid Development Operations insuring minimum downtime
Source: PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1dzre)
I find this deeply encouraging.
It is a step towards a diverse but reduced friction software highway.
The user community is not well served by uniform models for data, software or UIs.
The user community can be well served by a reduced friction software highway as they move data from application to application.
Microsoft has taken a large step towards a reduced friction software highway today. And it is appreciated!