“We are the only search platform proven to accelerate success in building stable, flexible, scalable apps that meet the demands of the world’s largest companies.”: Lucidworks

The web is a huge, dynamic landscape of information, and navigating through it is not an easy task. There are billions of Web pages, and the variety of content online is expanding dramatically, including blogs, social media, maps, videos, photos and podcasts. Whether typing on a computer in their cubicle or using their smartphone on a street corner, people are trying to sift through this growing morass of data, looking for everything from car repair advice to a nearby restaurant that's not too expensive. For search platforms, this breadth of data and formats is providing both new challenges and new opportunities.

Concentrating on these challenges for large organizations, Lucidworks was established to deliver enterprise-grade search development platforms built with the power of Apache Lucene/Solr open source search technology. Unlike less proven market entrants who are not optimized for prototyping and scalability, Lucidworks ensures expert integration, security, deployment success, and readiness for the increased data complexity inherent in long-term growth. Only Lucidworks has attracted the expertise and talent of the world’s most committed search professionals, creating a development environment that balances simplicity and flexibility, while delivering unmatched scalability across the widest array of data types and structures. 

The Fact

Lucidworks was originally founded to provide support and services for organizations using the Apache Solr technology for creating search applications. In 2014, the company shifted to a subscription-based model with the launch of their Lucidworks Fusion platform for faster development of search and data applications. 

First product launch and its success

Lucidworks Fusion is a development platform for building search and data applications featuring a highly scalable search engine and NoSQL data store paired with powerful machine learning and AI components for superior relevancy and greater insights. Teams can quickly create bespoke data applications for web and mobile bringing a consumer-like search experience to the enterprise. Built on the global search standard Apache Solr, Lucidworks Fusion dramatically increases businesses’ ability to deliver personalized and contextual search results against a wide variety of data sources. 

Like any new platform, Lucidworks Fusion launched with a full court press, but the firm knew that the main effort post-launch would be courting developers and organizations to adopt the platform. With consistent advocacy from champions within companies, Lucidworks has built a fan base in some of the world’s largest organizations. Many customers start with building smaller apps for a specific business unit or job role and then quickly realize they can standardize on Fusion for faster implementation of search and data applications across the organization. 

Rationale behind the firm’s expansion

The firm recently acquired Twigkit, a company specializing in search and data application user experience. They have a robust, mature framework for creating beautiful data experiences for users and developers. The Twigkit product is currently being integrated into the Fusion suite as Fusion App Studio. It focuses on Global 1000 companies across three primary use cases: Enterprise Search, Retail, and Customer Service. 

Strong suit of Lucidworks

Talent: Lucidworks was founded by the team that created Apache Solr. Solr is the world’s most widely deployed open source search platform, and used by 90% of the Fortune 500. The company employs some of the world’s foremost search and machine learning experts, and is obsessed about helping companies build search experiences that transform their business. 

Technology: Lucidworks is continuing to integrate cutting-edge technology with Fusion such as ready-to-use AI and machine learning capabilities. Fusion brings highly advanced capabilities to enterprises that depend on powerful, scalable search tools to connect users with data. It is also continuing to develop its advanced and intuitive UI. 

Process: From sales to professional services, it develops close relationships with its customers and their stakeholders and developers so the company always knows what they are looking to build next.

Product popularity: With Apache Solr being the most prevalent search technology used by the Fortune 500, its Fusion platform is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this install base to provide a faster, easier way to create search and data applications. 

Consistent growth as an organization: Companies today are awash in an ever-expanding sea of data. They inherently know that there is value in this data but are struggling to unlock that value in a way that meets user expectations and organizational goals. 

Beautiful data experiences

The firm employs one-third of the committers for the Apache Solr open source project who contribute a large portion of the code. It also hosts the annual conference for users of Solr with its Lucene/Solr Revolution conference. A current plague in open source projects is that large companies want to take, take, and take from the open source community without giving back. Lucidworks has a completely different approach. It commits over 80% of the Apache Solr open source code that is used by customers, competitors, and everyone in the Solr community. It believes that all ships rise with the tide.

Mission Statement

The company’s mission is to enable organizations to connect users with the actionable information and insights needed to wow customers, empower employees, and build a better business. Lucidworks will be recognized as the leader in the next-generation Enterprise Search market by 2020. 

Meet Will Hayes, CEO

Will joined Lucidworks in 2013 as Chief Product Officer and was appointed as CEO in 2014. He has over 15 years of product, marketing, and business development experience. Prior to Lucidworks he was head of technical business development for Splunk, where he was responsible for defining the company’s market category and key product feature sets. He created and led the company’s global partner program, building an ecosystem of consultants, developers, resellers, system integrators, service providers, and technology partners. Earlier in his career, Hayes served as a software engineer at Genentech, where he built solutions that supported the sales and drug development teams in their field activities. 

“We don’t just measure a search application’s success in terms of data and users. We measure it in terms of how it helps employees and customers find what they need which has a direct impact on business results”