Munich/Würzburg, February 25, 2008
Autonomy, a leading global provider of infrastructure software for companies, is supplying its IDOL server to Vogel Business Media. The cross-media specialist information provider Vogel Business Media is one of the leading international media companies in the specialist publishing sector. In addition to specialist books and journals, conferences and seminars, its range includes over 50 websites and around 20 business efficiency portals. The industry-oriented web portals provide high-quality specialist information on the topics of industry, cars & mobility, information technology, foreign trade as well as law, business and taxes.
"Find instead of search" is the concept behind the new business efficiency portals from the international specialist information provider. Autonomy, the leading provider of information access technology according to Gartner's Magic Quadrant 2007, now provides the right tool for accurate online searches on these portals with IDOL-Server. Vogel Business Media's requirements for a search technology for the new web portals included fast and advanced online search (Quick Search, Advanced Search), clustering, multilingualism, hyperlinking and the processing of various file formats. IDOL is used "completely invisibly" for the user in the back end and is linked to a web content management solution in the front end.
What can the IDOL server do?
Readers can use it to find specific specialist information, regardless of the data format - from editorial articles, white papers, advertising company and product entries to podcasts. A "guided search" automatically checks and corrects spelling when keywords are entered. With the help of search agents, RSS feeds and keywords, the industry expert can edit the news in the personalized My area and display it in a separate industry monitor. The result set can be refined using a topic channel filter, an industry filter (e.g. chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food industry) and a content filter (such as news, webcasts, products). The reader can also select according to content type. In addition to the requested results, the IDOL server automatically identifies related news and recommendations by analyzing the entire content for "related content", thus offering the expert added value in terms of knowledge. Thanks to the multilingual search function, it will also be possible to use the portals internationally in the future. Registration for the specialist portals is free of charge.
Innovation and growth
The aim of Vogel Business Media's innovative business model is to strengthen its publishing activities and online presence with the business efficiency portals and thus generate new sales in the digital environment, an absolute growth market in the media industry. The editorial specialist information is segmented via topic channels and prepared according to areas of interest. The following business efficiency portals are available on the Internet, among others: MaschinenMarkt.de, Blechnet.com, Elektronikpraxis.de, Elektrotechnik.de, SearchSecurity.de, SearchNetworking.de, SearchStorage.de, SearchDatacenter.de, it-business.de, process.de, laborpraxis.de and Automobil-Industrie.de.
The project requirements at a glance:
- the categorization of new and old content using an intelligent thesaurus ("categorizing")
- Search functionalities for internal and external content with filter options ("information retrieval")
- the creation of anonymized user profiles of visitors or the enrichment of semantic correlations with data from user behaviour ("profiling / analyzing")
- the summary of content and user behavior based on semantic, logical characteristics ("clustering")
- the analysis of specific correlations, in particular for marketing activities and optimization ("analyzing")
Quote from project manager Mark Reinold, Vogel Future Group:
"I was particularly impressed by the IDOL server's strong performance and the very good product features of Autonomy's search algorithms. Thanks to various search parameters and filters, our readers can really select their results very individually as part of the Quick and Advanced Search and thus achieve a high quality of information. It really is exactly the solution we were looking for and it still has a lot of potential for the future," says Mark C. Reinold, CTO Online, Vogel Future Group. "Autonomy Consultants also managed to connect the IDOL server with our web content management in close cooperation with our development team for this project. This proves that the technology is very open and flexible and can be tailored very individually to the task at hand."
Quote Victor Cohen, General Manager Northern Europe, Autonomy:
"For the portal projects of Vogel Business Media, a very fast search and a high quality of information and data were decisive factors. Autonomy's search technology has a conceptual and textual understanding of all types of electronic data and content. This enables the IDOL server to find structured and unstructured information in texts, e-mails, audio and video files. XML makes it easier to extract information from business applications. Unlike a simple keyword search, the Meaning Based Computing concept automatically analyzes, understands and classifies content according to topic. On the new Vogel Business Media portals, this function ensures that related news and articles that could be of interest to readers are also automatically searched for and displayed as a result."
If you have any questions, please contact:
Iris Roidl
Text 100
Public Relations
Nymphenburgerstrasse 168
D-80634 Munich
Tel: +4989 - 99 83 70-19
Fax: +49 89 - 98 18 72
E-Mail: Iris.Roidl@text100.de
Mark C. Reinold
CTO Online
Vogel Business Media
97064 Würzburg
Phone +49 931 418-27 59
Fax +49 931 418-26 03
E-Mail: Mark_Reinold@vogel-medien.de
