Prepress

Northcliffe Media Selects Autonomy for Editorial Content Search Portal

Tuesday 12. August 2008 - IDOL Indexes 40 Million Documents to Enhance the Editorial Process

Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise today announced that Northcliffe Media, one of the largest newspaper publishing groups in the UK, Central and Eastern Europe, has selected Autonomy’s unique Meaning-Based Computing technology to power its corporate pan-enterprise search portal, Spider. In a project pioneered by Autonomy and long-standing Autonomy partner Okana, Northcliffe Media selected Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) to index an initial 40 million documents which will grow daily, thus serving as an invaluable editorial tool for media professionals to help them spot breaking news, locate relevant content, and keep abreast of new developments in real-time.
“Legacy search is increasingly becoming an obsolete tool for deadline-driven media professionals working in an environment of information overload,” commented Tony Foy at Northcliffe Media. “In a sharp contrast, IDOL’s conceptual search capabilities are unmatched in the industry. Through the understanding of the interests, needs and requirements of users, as well as its Automatic Hyperlinks and Alerting features, IDOL delivers unique conceptual search of editorial content regardless of where data resides in the organisation. IDOL will also enable agile development and deployment of new and exciting content-rich web services to our business customers and readers plus providing significant benefits from the consolidation of disparate content systems and locations.”
Autonomy was chosen after a competitive procurement due to its unique ability to derive meaning from content and identify patterns between conceptually similar article, image and page content providing a user-friendly experience as well as enhancing efficiency and collaboration. The new Spider portal will provide Northcliffe Media experts from all departments with a single point of access and will become a mission critical tool in the editorial process.
“Recent years have witnessed the transformation of the media market,” said Autonomy CEO’s Dr Mike Lynch. “Professionals in the sector face the challenge of keeping audiences satisfied, meeting tight deadlines and keeping abreast of new developments. Forward-thinking organizations like Northcliffe Media embrace Meaning-Based Computing to allow journalists to depart from purely mechanical tasks such as searching for content and enable them to focus on producing high quality stories, ultimately giving them a leading edge in the market.”