Lucene – TNR Global

TNR Global Software Engineer Completes LucidWorks Solr Training

A Hands-On Workshop for Building Killer Search Apps–best practices to develop scalable, high availability and high performance search applications.

TNR Global announces the completion of LucidWorks “Solr Unleashed– A Hands-On Workshop for Building Killer Search Apps” training course. The course was attended by senior software engineer Chaim “Jeff” Peck.

From LucidWorks: A Hands-On Workshop for Building Killer Search Apps “This three-day class is designed to offer students in-depth information to implement Solr search engine technologies. Through a combination of lectures, hands-on lab exercises and tutorials, students will learn to apply best practices to develop scalable, high availability and high performance search applications. At the end of the course, students will understand how to set up and use Solr to index and search, how to analyze and solve common problems, and how to use optional Solr modules.”

“Jeff completed the course this summer with flying colors, and his attendance there rounds out our search team’s Solr skills wonderfully,” said Karen Lynn, Director of Business Development. “Our search team has been working with Solr for a couple of years now but Jeff’s focus was committed to a commercial search product that we also work with. We like our team to be well balanced and cross trained in several search applications, so Jeff completing this course was really the final piece of the puzzle in our Solr background.”

TNR Global is an authorized integration partner for LucidWorks Enterprise search products.

TNR Global to Attend Enterprise Search Summit Fall 2012 in Washington, DC

We always find these conference are a great way to network with other search professionals facing the same challenges.

Hadley, MA August 15, 2012 TNR Global announced today that they plan to attend the Enterprise Search Summit this fall in Washington, DC. The conference is being held at the Marriott Renaissance Washington, DC Downtown Hotel October 17-19th, 2012.

At the conference representatives from TNR are looking forward to networking with peers and learning the latest trends in the realm of Enterprise Search and big data. The conference’s theme “Strategies to hit your moving targets” will feature talks on findability, open source, cloud search, best practices, and other topics. Attending the conference will be Michael McIntosh, VP of Search Technology and Karen E. Lynn, Director of Business Development.

“We always find these conference are a great way to network with other search professionals facing the same challenges. It’s a great way to exchange valuable information and build relationships with peers and potential clients.” said Lynn. We’re especially interested in learning how the market is evolving in terms of emerging technologies and current solutions. We are currently focused on migration from commercial to open source search, managing large data sets or “big data,” as well as learning more about what users need in their search solution.”

Renaissance Washington, DC Downtown Hotel

999 Ninth Street NW

Washington, District Of Columbia 20001

TNR Global’s New Relationship with Lucid Imagination Adds Value for Clients

“Lucid’s products expand upon open source tools to offer many additional features and extensive support on their product line” said Michael McIntosh, VP of Search Technologies for TNR

Late last April 2012, TNR Global entered into a strategic relationship with California’s Lucid Imagination. One of the many benefits to this alliance is that in addition to the integration services TNR has historically offered, clients now can obtain enterprise class search platforms designed by Lucid Imagination and integrated by TNR Global’s search team. “Lucid’s products expand upon open source tools to offer many additional features and extensive support on their product line” said Michael McIntosh, VP of Search Technologies for TNR. “Lucid’s product offerings are solid and they have a range of options that we can now offer by way of our relationship with them. They round out our services and solutions very nicely.” Details on Lucid Imagination’s enterprise class search platform can be viewed at Lucid Imagination’s website.

TNR still provides customized integration for search including Lucene Solr as well as other open source and commercial products. “When a client approaches us with a problem they need solved, we always look at what they need most out of a solution. During our evaluation period, we look at a number of factors. One solution doesn’t always do the trick–we always suggest what is best for the client based on their particular circumstance.” This strategy allows TNR to offer a range of solutions, including support. “Now that we are in a relationship with Lucid, we have even more options–and having choices is good for our clients.” said Karen Lynn, Director of Business Development.

TNR Global (TNR) is a systems design and integration company focused on enterprise search and cloud computing solutions. TNR develops scalable web-based search solutions focusing on companies and organizations in the following industries: News Sites, Publishing, Web Directories, Information Portals, Web Catalogs, Education, Manufacturing and Distribution, Customer Service, and Life Sciences. For more information, please visit: www.tnrglobal.com

About Lucid Imagination

Lucid Imagination is the only company that delivers an enterprise-grade search development platform built on the power of Apache Lucene/Solr open source search. Out of the 35 Core Committers to the Apache Lucene/Solr project, 9 individuals work for Lucid Imagination, making the company the largest supporter of open source search in the industry. Customers include AT&T, Sears, Ford, Verizon, Cisco, Zappos, Raytheon, The Guardian, The Smithsonian Institution, Salesforce.com, The Motley Fool, Qualcomm, Taser, eHarmony and many other household names around the world. Lucid Imagination investors include Shasta Ventures, Granite Ventures, Walden International, and In-Q-Tel. Learn more about the company at www.lucidimagination.com

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For more information on this topic or to schedule an interview, please contact Karen E. Lynn at 413-425-1499 or email at Karen@tnrglobal.com

TNR Global (TNR) is a systems design and integration company focused on enterprise search and cloud computing solutions. TNR develops scalable web-based search solutions focusing on companies and organizations in the following industries: News Sites, Publishing, Web Directories, Information Portals, Web Catalogs, Education, Manufacturing and Distribution, Customer Service, and Life Sciences. For more information, please visit: www.tnrglobal.com

About Lucid Imagination

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For more information on this topic or to schedule an interview, please contact Karen E. Lynn at 413-425-1499 or email at Karen@tnrglobal.com

TNR Global of Hadley, MA Forms Strategic Relationship with California-based Lucid Imagination

“This relationship indicates our commitment to Apache Lucene/Solr open source search and other related embedded search applications,” said Michael McIntosh

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Hadley, MA–May 29, 2012— TNR Global announced they are entering into a relationship with California based Lucid Imagination, to help businesses and organizations improve search technology and functionality within their digital infrastructure. As part of the agreement, TNR Global will provide the option of Lucid’s products, training, and support services to their clients.

Partners are selected for their deep technology expertise in web and search application development, and experience in market focus areas.

While TNR will still remain search vendor “neutral” to provide a wide variety of technologies–both open source and commercial—to their clients, the relationship is a bold move in support of open source search.ce in market focus areas. “This relationship indicates our commitment to Apache Lucene/Solr open source search and other related embedded search applications,” said Michael McIntosh, VP of Search technologies for TNR Global. “We’re excited to have direct access to the core development team for Apache/Solr,” he continued. “Lucene/Solr has become a mature product and we’re confident in its performance for many applications, large and small.

Lucid’s selection process for this level of relationship is based upon technology focus and expertise. “Our partners deliver complementary products and services and apply their proven expertise in a variety of industries and technology disciplines to solve even the toughest search application challenges and to implement successful Lucene/Solr projects.”

TNR Global’s executive team attended the Partner Summit at the Lucene Revolution Conference, a technology conference dedicated to the open source search technology built on Apache/Lucene Solr held in Cambridge, Massachusetts to learn about the latest LucidWorks Platform release and to meet the new CEO of Lucid Imagination, Paul Doscher.

“We’ve attended Lucene Revolution conference in May as Gold Sponsors just after solidifying our relationship with Lucid. Further, we have recently published a definitive white paper on the topic of migrating from a commercial search engine to Lucene/Solr. We feel very confident, well positioned, and supported in the marketplace to handle projects of any scope,” said Karen E. Lynn, Director of Business Development for TNR Global.

About Lucid Imagination

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For more information on this topic or to schedule an interview, please contact Karen E. Lynn at 413-425-1499 or email at Karen@tnrglobal.com

For Many Companies, Migration to a New Search Engine is Inevitable

HADLEY, MA– March 12, 2012

In the world of Enterprise Search, everything is changing. Companies who have been using Microsoft’s internal search engine, FAST Enterprise Search Platform, will be forced to make a change as Microsoft discontinues support for the search platform for companies using Linux as their operating system. Anticipating the need for a solution, local technology consultants TNR Global is pleased to announce the release of a White Paper for migrating off FAST ESP to a new search engine, Solr. The paper is titled Bridging the Gap: A Migration Path from Fast ESP to Apache Solr.

This effort began last October when TNR Global presented on the subject of migration from FAST to Solr at the open source conference, Apache Lucene Eurocon in Barcelona, Spain. The paper contains a case study with architecture overview, loading millions of documents into Solr indexes, evaluation and recommendation of tools to bridge the feature gap, migrating custom pipeline code, and the vastly improved ROI after implementation. “It’s basically a road map for companies looking at options for migration, and we outline Solr as a very good option” said Karen E. Lynn, Director of Business Development.

“We have spent over 9 years working with the FAST ESP product and we understand the nuances of what customers have come to expect from the technology. We’ve identified Solr as a top choice for migrating off FAST as support for the product drops off” said Michael McIntosh, VP of Search Technologies and lead author of the paper. “Solr is an open source technology that has matured and is certainly stable enough for commercial use” said Chris Miles, Senior Software Engineer and contributor to the paper. “We’re excited about this migration option for our customers, and we believe over the long run, it will save them a lot of money and give them greater control over their search engine.”

This heavily anticipated paper will assist companies and organizations in planning their own FAST ESP to Apache Solr migrations and alert them to tools and techniques that can help them achieve a relatively painless process. Several large blue chip companies have expressed interest in the paper. “We’ve had a healthy response to the paper” said Lynn.

Internal search engines differ from public search engines like Google or Bing, in that an internal search engine only searches for content inside the company’s firewall. Google cannot access internal content, therefore companies use search technology to make their content ‘findable.’ “Companies want to keep internal information safe and private. But they still need to find it” explained Lynn. “That’s why they need search technology integrated into their organization’s system.”

For more information on search engines, product search, web portals and search engine migration, visit TNR’s main website. To receive a free copy of the white paper, click here.

TNR Global www.tnrglobal.com, is a systems design and integration company focused on enterprise search and cloud computing solutions for publishing companies, news sites, web directories, academia, enterprise, and SaaS companies. TNR’s past clients include the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mass Art & Culture, InterNano, Innovara, and the Allegis Group. TNR Global is located at 245 Russell Street, Suite 10 in Hadley, Massachusetts. TNR Global serves clients throughout New England, nationally, and world-wide. Its offices are in Hadley and Greenfield, Massachusetts.

UK Software Company TwigKit Partners with TNR Global to Deliver Search Solutions for FAST and Solr

Hadley, MA–November 28, 2011–TNR Global announced today that they have entered into a strategic partnership with London, UK software company TwigKit.

“Our companies have a number of qualities in common that allow us to combine forces and service clients with a very complete solution” says Karen Lynn, TNR Global’s Director of Business Development. “TwigKit has a very appealing user interface for users across several platforms, and TNR’s strength is on creating a powerful back end search application. Combined, it’s a powerful solution for companies needing a strong search function with an easy to use interface.”

Representatives from the two companies have been in friendly talks for over a year now, meeting periodically at industry conferences. Both companies were in attendance at the Apache Lucene EuroCon conference in Barcelona last October, where the partnership was formalized. Both presentations from TwigKit and TNR can be viewed here.

“TNR’s focus on implementing and servicing enterprise search solutions across a number of platforms is an excellent fit for TwigKit,” says Stefan Olafsson, TwigKit’s co-founder and chief architect. “Our software enables polished user interfaces for search-based applications, provides a rapid development framework, and works across a number of enterprise search platforms including Microsoft FAST and Apache Solr. We’re excited about working with TNR to produce search solutions that boast both a superb user experience and an outstanding technical implementation.”

TwigKit powers enterprise search applications in government and blue-chip organizations. Encapsulating search best practices into configurable components, TwigKit establishes a platform-independent standard compatible with most search technologies including Microsoft FAST, Google Search Appliance, and Apache Solr. Started in London in 2009, TwigKit’s founders organize the 350-member Enterprise Search London meetup, regularly speak at conferences, and write about search and user experience for publications including A List Apart, Boxes & Arrows, and UX Magazine.

TNR Global (TNR) is a systems design and integration company focused on enterprise search and cloud computing solutions. TNR develops scalable web-based search solutions built on the open source LAMP stack. TNR has over 10 years of hands-on experience in web systems and enterprise search implementations, both proprietary and open source search technologies, specializing in FAST and Lucene Solr search applications. Specifically TNR works with content intensive websites for companies and organizations in the following industries: News Sites, Publishing, Web Directories, Information Portals, Web Catalogs, Education, Manufacturing and Distribution, Customer Service, and Life Sciences. TNR Global has offices in western Massachusetts.

TNR Global Attends KMWorld’s Enterprise Search Summit Fall 2011

A proof of concept and rapid integration are essential for search customers–they cannot visualize what a search solution will look like without some help from the search professional.

Last week TNR Global attended the Enterprise Search Summit organized by KMWorld in Washington, DC. VP of Search Technologies Michael McIntosh and Director of Business Development Karen E. Lynn attended the three day conference and Enterprise Solutions Showcase at the Marriott Wardman Park. Several companies were in attendance, and some common themes emerged. Among these were designing for users, dealing with unstrcutured content, the need for better search and content analytics to facilitate better search results, as well as tagging content as part of a best practice in workflow. Also discussed was the need for search vendors to demonstrate to search customers was “right looks like” in a search solution. A proof of concept and rapid integration are essential for search customers–they cannot visualize what a search solution will look like without some help from the search professional.

An unexpected surprise came when the speaker on open source search was unable to attend at the last moment, our own Michael McIntosh was asked to step in and present on the subject. Fortunately, he was fresh from his presentation at Apache Lucene EuroCon and already had his presentation loaded on his machine. Michael discussed Solr and made general points on migrating from a commercial search engine like FAST ESP to a open source platform like Lucene Solr.

Overall it was a great conference with lots of informative talks and friendly search professionals. We’re looking forward to the next Enterprise Search Summit in Spring, 2012.

We’re at Apache Lucene EuroCon in Barcelona 2011

“We’re certain that the urgency to migrate off FAST ESP will be ramping up significantly.”

We’re very excited to be in attendance at the Apache Lucene EuroCon in Barcelona October 17, 18, 19, and 20th, 2011. Our own Michael McIntosh, VP of Search Technologies will be presenting a talk on October 19th, Enterprise Search: FAST ESP to Lucene Solr. The good folks at Lucid Imagination are presenting the conference and will be video recording his talk for future broadcast.

After the conference, Michael will author a White Paper on migrating from FAST ESP to Lucene Solr, expected in November 2011. For a free copy of the White Paper, email us expressing your interest at fast2solr@tnrglobal.com. We believe that those businesses operating on a Linux system will be seeking out the power of Lucene Solr as their licenses expire and support for FAST ESP dries up. We’ve worked with FAST ESP for 7 years and understand it’s strengths and weaknesses. We know businesses who are used to the power of FAST ESP will need something just as powerful, and Lucene Solr is a very nice fit. “It’s a robust platform, capable of a lot that FAST ESP covers,” said Michael. “We’re certain that the urgency to migrate off FAST ESP will be ramping up significantly.”

TNR Global to present at Apache Lucene Eurocon 2011 in Barcelona

We are happy to announce that TNR Global’s own Michael McIntosh will be presenting at the Apache Lucene Eurocon 2011 in Barcelona this October. Michael’s talk is titled “Enterprise Search: FAST ESP to Lucene Solr.” His presentation will discuss migration from the FAST ESP platform to a Lucene Solr search platform. There are many reasons an IT department with a large scale search installation would want to move from a proprietary platform to Lucene Solr. In the case of FAST Search, the company’s purchase by Microsoft and discontinuation of the Linux platform has created an urgency for FAST users. Illustrated through actual case studies, the presentation will include challenges and concerns, present solutions and work-arounds to overcome migration issues.

Michael has more than 16 years of experience in large scale systems design and operation, online consumer product development, high volume transaction processing and engineering management. He has extensive experience developing, integrating and maintaining search technology solutions for companies such as FAST Search and Lycos.

We’re excited that Michael will be presenting in Barcelona this fall. Please introduce yourself if you’re able to go!