Squiz Acquires Leading Australian Search Company Funnelback to Deliver More Sophisticated and Intuitive Enterprise-Class Search Solutions
Squiz Acquires Leading Australian Search Company Funnelback to Deliver More Sophisticated and Intuitive Enterprise-Class Search Solutions
London and Sydney, 2nd July 2009
Squiz today announced its acquisition of the enterprise search engine technology and services company Funnelback at a private executive seminar event in London.
Funnelback’s flagship product Funnelback Enterprise is an integrated, high value, industrial strength search solution that searches content assets across internet, intranet, database and shared network drives, as well as electronic document management and portal systems. It is used in some of the most demanding web environments by a broad range of customers including the Australian Federal Government, Oxfam and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Squiz’s acquisition of the company will bring this leading edge search technology to the global MySource Matrix customer base, helping Squiz’s growing portfolio of high end enterprise web site customers to deliver more sophisticated and intuitive end user search solutions.
Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Funnelback will remain trading as a separate company and retain its own brand. “There will be no changes to company structure, staffing or strategy aside from a increased focus on close integration with MySource Matrix. Funnelback is doing a great job and our technologies compliment each other tremendously,” said Squiz Managing Director and founder, John-Paul Syriatowicz.
Syriatowicz continued: “As organisations continue their inevitable move towards browser-centric information management, powerful, fully-integrated search will play an increasingly important role. I believe 2010 will herald a fundamental shift in the CMS and search marketplace as clients and vendors realise the two are inseparable. Trying to treat them as discrete solutions simply doesn’t work.”
Funnelback’s search technology was originally developed by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) before being spun off as a CSIRO owned company for commercialisation and further development. Karl Rodrigues, Investment Portfolio Manager for the CSIRO said “Funnelback has produced some tremendous technology and Squiz is the right partner to bring their offering to the world stage. I see this acquisition as a tremendous opportunity for both Australian companies.”
“I’m really excited about the opportunities for Funnelback’s search product here in the UK but also Europe and the US.” said Steve Morgan, Director Squiz UK, “There’s a significant gap in the enterprise search and CMS market and Funnelback fills it by delivering reduced implementation times and lower costs.”
“This is a remarkable opportunity for both companies and our clients. Squiz’s MySource Matrix and Funnelback already integrate well together so many of the benefits are immediately available to our clients,” said Stuart Beil, Executive director of Funnelback. “The added resources provided by Squiz will allow us to improve our offering to our Australian clients and also help Funnelback become a global brand.”
About Squiz and the MySource Matrix Open Source Content Management System
Squiz is one of the world’s largest privately owned content management companies with offices throughout Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Europe and also the US later this year. Squiz is author of MySource Matrix, an enterprise-class, supported open source content management system (CMS) used by governments, universities and corporations around the world. For more information see: www.squiz.net.
About Funnelback
Funnelback creates a powerful search engine of the same name used to search many web sites and data collections including all Australian Government websites through www.australia.gov.au and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s iconic portal www.abc.net.au. For more information, see: www.funnelback.com.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) formed in 1926 and now employing around 6500 people, has become Australia’s premier research organisation, with an extensive track-record of breakthrough technologies. With more than 160 existing companies founded through CSIRO technology and many others utilising CSIRO innovations, CSIRO has become one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world. For more information see: www.csiro.au.
For press enquiries please contact Squiz by visiting: www.squiz.net.au/contact-us.
It's been a week with 'Search' as the main theme. I attended two presentations / workshops / seminars about 'monetizing search' by JTeam (technology Solr / Lucene) and Microsoft (technology FAST ESP) and now I read about Funnelback & Squiz. Makes sense to join forces to be able to compete with the future Sharepoint/FAST combination you have to be prepared. Only last week I saw a demo of Drupal & Solr by Acquia. CMS and Enterprise Search is blossoming.
