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Vivísimo

Vivísimo

Overview
Vivisimo is a privately held enterprise search
Enterprise search
Enterprise search is the practice of identifying and enabling specific content across the enterprise to be indexed, searched, and displayed to authorized users.-Enterprise search summary:...

 software company in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is a city in and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and the second largest city in the state. Its population was 334,563 at the 2000 census; by 2006, it was estimated to have fallen to 312,819. The population of the seven-county metropolitan area is...

 that develops and sells software products to improve search on the web and in enterprises. The focus of Vivisimo's research thus far has been the concept of clustering
Data clustering
Cluster analysis or clustering is the assignment of a set of observations into subsets so that observations in the same cluster are similar in some sense...

 search results based on topic: for example, dividing the results of a search for "cell" into groups like "biology," "battery," and "prison." This process allows users to intuitively narrow their search results to a particular category or browse through related fields of information, and seeks to avoid the "overload" problem of sorting through too many results.

Vivisimo's main product offering is Velocity — an enterprise search platform that unifies access to secure business repositories.
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Encyclopedia
Vivisimo is a privately held enterprise search
Enterprise search
Enterprise search is the practice of identifying and enabling specific content across the enterprise to be indexed, searched, and displayed to authorized users.-Enterprise search summary:...

 software company in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is a city in and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and the second largest city in the state. Its population was 334,563 at the 2000 census; by 2006, it was estimated to have fallen to 312,819. The population of the seven-county metropolitan area is...

 that develops and sells software products to improve search on the web and in enterprises. The focus of Vivisimo's research thus far has been the concept of clustering
Data clustering
Cluster analysis or clustering is the assignment of a set of observations into subsets so that observations in the same cluster are similar in some sense...

 search results based on topic: for example, dividing the results of a search for "cell" into groups like "biology," "battery," and "prison." This process allows users to intuitively narrow their search results to a particular category or browse through related fields of information, and seeks to avoid the "overload" problem of sorting through too many results.

Vivisimo's main product offering is Velocity — an enterprise search platform that unifies access to secure business repositories. Vivisimo was first to offer social search
Social search
Social search or a social search engine is a type of web search method that determines the relevance of search results by considering the interactions or contributions of users...

, which lets enterprise users share their knowledge with coworkers by tagging, ranking, and annotating search results.

Vivisimo also owns the public web search service Clusty
Clusty
Clusty is a metasearch engine developed by Vivísimo which offers clusters of results. Vivísimo is a company built on Web search technology developed by Carnegie Mellon University researchers. Interestingly Lycos, a search engine that was popular a decade earlier, was also developed at the same...

.

History


Vivisimo was founded in 2000 by a trio of computer science researchers at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since its inception, Carnegie Mellon has grown into a world-renowned institution, with numerous programs that are frequently ranked among the best in the world...

. The name was taken from the Latin root viva for "life," with the Romance suffix -issimo indicating a superlative. Earlier marketing tied this to the company's older tagline, "bright, lively, and intelligent."

In October 2005, Vivisimo was awarded the contract to power the search portion of FirstGov.gov (now called USA.gov
USA.gov
USA.gov is the official web portal of the United States Government. It is designed to improve the public’s interaction with the U.S. Government by quickly directing website visitors to the services or information they are seeking. USA.gov links to every Federal agency and to State, local, and...

), the official web portal of the United States federal government.

The company is funded from a variety of sources, including Innovation Works, the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

, and private investors. Its products are used by a wide variety of websites, companies, and government agencies.

Products


Velocity is sold as an installed or hosted application to enterprises, governments, and OEM
OEM
OEM may stand for:* Original equipment manufacturer, the original manufacturer of a component for a product, which may be resold by another company* Office of Emergency Management, a general term for emergency management functions...

s. Vivisimo provides professional services, acknowledging that enterprise search in complex corporate environments benefits from the shared experience of similar deployments elsewhere.

Velocity's social search
Social search
Social search or a social search engine is a type of web search method that determines the relevance of search results by considering the interactions or contributions of users...

features allow users to contribute to organizational content by tagging, voting, annotating and sharing search results. The contributions are instantly indexed in new searches, which helps foster collaboration throughout the enterprise.

Product Awards

  • InfoWorld 2008 Technology of the Year - Best Enterprise Search
  • InfoWorld 2007 Technology of the Year - Best Enterprise Search
  • InfoWorld 2006 Technology of the Year - Best Enterprise Search
  • Network Computing Editor's Choice - Enterprise Search Review

Reviews