Fulcrum lets slip Web retriever?s leash

Fulcrum Technology cocked its hat at Oracle and long-standing rival Verity this week with the launch of its Web-based retrieval software.

The Knowledge Network software developed by Fulcrum helps users retrieve information from a single window, irrespective of where it resides in the corporation. It bundles information retrieval with document intelligence, document management, groupware integration, knowledge mapping and security agents.

Liz Fletcher, European director of strategic communications at Fulcrum, said: ?With Knowledge Network users can create virtual folders, for example, of all the marketing information in the organisation wherever that is held. They don?t need to know where the information is held, whether it?s in Notes or on the Web, the knowledge base is mapped for them.?

According to Fletcher, the product takes Fulcrum into a different market. ?We still compete with Verity in the advanced information retrieval market,? she said. ?But knowledge management is the next step for intranet technology.?

Fulcrum also announced this week that Informix would bundle its knowledge retrieval software into a datablade module to be shipped with every copy of the Universal Server database in Europe. The datablade module, based on Fulcrum Search Server, is scheduled for release this summer and will support all major European languages.

At the centre of the Knowledge Network product, at a server level, is a searching service that dynamically constructs a personalised knowledge map on a per user basis, according to the sources available for searching and the user?s access rights. On the client side, users can use any Web browser to view the information.

The product, which will ship in the second quarter, costs about $400 a user for an average configuration.