What is Lucid Imagination?

Lucid Imagination is the first commercial company exclusively dedicated to the Apache Lucene open source technology. We provide free certified distributions of Lucene and Solr software, commercial-grade support, training, high-level consulting and value-added software for the Lucene and Solr technology. Lucid Imagination's goal is to provide value-added resources both for the Apache Lucene developer community as well as enterprises using or evaluating Lucene/Solr for their search solutions. We believe that a well-funded commercial company with predictable support and services will further increase the penetration of Lucene/Solr in enterprises, thereby growing the community and giving each and every community member more opportunities.

Our founding team consists of several key contributors and committers to the Lucene family, as well as experts in enterprise search and discovery application development. These include Erik Hatcher, Grant Ingersoll, Yonik Seeley, Marc Krellenstein, Mark Miller, Sami Siren   and others. In addition, our advisory board members include several technical and business experts from the open source community, such as Doug Cutting (Cloudera), the creator of Lucene, Nutch and Hadoop; Chris Hostetter (CNET); Mark Brewer (SpringSource); and Matt Asay (Canonical).

What does Lucid Imagination sell?

Lucid Imagination provides commercial-grade support, training, high-level consulting and value-added software for the Lucene search library and Solr search server.

What software products does Lucid Imagination offer?

In addition to our services offerings, we will develop and sell value-add software to complement Apache Lucene/Solr that will make it easier to install and configure the software and build and deploy powerful enterprise search applications. Our first value-add software is LucidGaze for Solr, an open source visual framework for monitoring Solr performance. LucidGaze for Solr is part of our certified distribution, and is available for download, free. The LucidWorks Certified Distribution for Solr is comprehensive, tested and release-stable certified distribution of Apache Solr available free from Lucid Imagination and includes a comprehensive Reference Guide and apowerful Installer.

Does Lucid Imagination own or control Lucene in any way?

We absolutely do not, nor will we ever claim to own or control Lucene. On the contrary, Lucid Imagination is a full participant in the Apache Lucene community just like any other individual or organization. The Apache Software Foundation continues to set the technical direction of Lucene, Solr and other projects.

We will contribute any work we do with the Lucene and Solr cores back into the project and the community. As an example, Yonik Seeley recently contributed technology that resulted in significant improvements in Solr faceting performance. Our success depends on the success of the community, and we will continue to work as part of the community to help move Lucene/Solr forward.

How will Lucid Imagination benefit Lucene and the community?

Beyond the direct contributors and committers, often referred to as Developers, the Lucene community consists of thousands of application developers, also called Users, who make a living developing Lucene/Solr-based search applications and solutions. They may be independent consultants or employed by major enterprises like AOL, Apple, Orbitz, Netflix, Zappos, the Library of Congress and thousands of others. Many large organizations require reliable, predictable commercial-grade support in order to use any software in mission-critical applications. They also need ready access to well-organized information, documentation, training and interaction with Lucene/Solr experts in a predictable manner, in order to meet their project and business deadlines.

Our goal is to provide that critical foundation for Lucene application developers and to help them build and deploy Lucene and Solr based solutions, in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. In addition to the above, we intend to provide Lucene application developers a central resource for information they need, such as a knowledgebase, technical articles, podcasts, how-to videos, best practices, FAQs, etc.

Additionally, Lucid Imagination provides training, certification and education for Lucene application developers, and helps those individuals become more proficient and productive. By offering education programs, it is our goal to further encourage community involvement so that Lucene will expand and become the best and most widely used enterprise search and discovery technology in business.

What is the role of the Lucene committers within Lucid Imagination and how does this involvement influence their Lucene project leadership?

Our committer-employees will continue to be involved and committed as before to providing Lucene community members and application developers all the support, information and access to knowledge they need. At Lucid Imagination, we want the committer-employees' public presence in the community to remain unchanged. We hope to leverage their first-hand experience and expertise to guide the company in developing new services, software and solutions to meet the needs of the enterprise customers.

What is the relationship between Lucid Imagination and the Apache Software Foundation?

Lucid Imagination is and will continue to be a supporter of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). In fact, several of our employees, including Grant Ingersoll, Eric Hatcher and Yonik Seeley, are current ASF members; they will continue to serve in this role. We intend to maintain a very cooperative relationship with the ASF and the Apache community as a whole. We believe that our focus on commercial support and services complements ASF's mission to "deliver enterprise-grade, freely available software products."

How will the company participate in and give back to the Lucene community?

Lucid Imagination will contribute core Lucene and Solr development, such as bug fixes and feature enhancements, directly back to the community. As a matter of fact, we have recently contributed major enhancements to the Solr core, developed by Yonik Seeley, resulting in significant increases in faceting performance.

Does Lucid Imagination compete with search developers and consultants?

We consider search developers and consultants as key partners and prospective customers. We can be valuable partners to them by training and certifying them as Lucene/Solr specialists, helping them to market their services and to grow their business. In addition, we will offer a referral program for search developers and consultants. For instance, if an application developer at an enterprise wants help with his development project we are happy to direct him or her to a certified consultant in that specialty area.

Will Lucid Imagination build and implement my enterprise search functionality?

We do not plan to build a professional services organization. Our value will be in providing high-level consulting in areas of architecture, design and optimization, We will refer those looking to build and implement Lucene/Solr-based solutions to certified consultants through the program referenced above.

To what degree are Lucene community members who become Lucid Imagination employees able to maintain their independence?

Just as our existing committer-employees like Grant, Yonik, and Erik will be free to maintain their roles within the Lucene and Apache community, the same will be true of any future employees.

Who is on your leadership team?

Our CEO is Eric Gries, who has extensive experience building and leading companies. Marc Krellenstein, our CTO, founded the company, bringing with him over 20 years of enterprise search development expertise from Reed Elsevier and Northern Light. Frank Calderon is a seasoned business development and consulting executive with over 20 years of experience. Additional team members include Taly Beck with 20 years of experience in technical services, Eran Yaniv, a seasoned products solutions professional, and David Fishman, with over twenty years of experience in IT marketing and operational disciplines.

Who is on your advisory board?

Lucid Imagination's advisory board consists of open source and search experts, as well as members of the Lucene community. They include:

• Doug Cutting (Yahoo), the creator of Lucene, Nutch and Hadoop
• Chris Hostetter (CNET), Lucene/Solr Committer, PMC member
• Andrzej Bialecki - Lucene Committer, PMC member
• Ryan McKinley – Lucene Committer, PMC member
• Doug Levin (ex-CEO BlackDuck Software)
• Janpieter Scheerder (ex-SunSoft)
• Mark Brewer (SpringSource
• Matt Asay (Alfresco Software)
   

Who are your investors?

Lucid Imagination is backed by Granite Ventures, Walden International, and Shasta Ventures. The company recently received $10 million in Series-B funding, with a new investment from Shasta Ventures ,and participation from existing investors Granite Ventures and Walden International.

What is your vision for the company?

Lucid Imagination’s goals are to serve as a central resource for the entire Lucene community and marketplace, to make enterprise search application developers more productive, and to take enterprise adoption of Lucene and Solr to the next level by providing value-added software, documentation, commercial-grade support, training, and high-level consulting.
 

Given how long Lucene has existed as an open source project, why form this company now?

Lucene has achieved its incredible popularity and level of adoption because it is open source and because of the strengths of the technology. These strengths include its flexibility, out-of-the-box relevancy ranking, query performance and scalability. Both Lucene and Solr are quite robust and ready for the enterprise in a lot of ways, but need that extra push and support a commercial company can bring to bear not only to make the software easier to deploy, but also to enrich the community. However, like many other open source technologies, Lucene/Solr inherit some of the challenges common to open source software such as lack of guaranteed support or bug fixes, no formal quality control (the users are the testers), lack of formal support for upgrades, access to organized training and education for search application developers.

Lucid Imagination intends to further strengthen the Lucene/Solr open source technology by addressing the above challenges by providing commercial-grade support, training, consulting and by offering certified, tested versions of Lucene and Solr.

Do you have any customers currently? If so, how many do you have?

Lucid Imagination has closed over 50 customers in its first year of operations, including AT&T, , Sears, Ford, Verizon, Elsevier, The Motley Fool, Cisco, Macy's and Zappos.

What is the size of the enterprise search market?

According to IDC the search and discovery software market will reach $2.4 billion in revenues in 2010, with annual growth of almost 10%.
 

What is your partnership strategy?

Lucid Imagination's partnership strategy is three-fold. First, we aim to develop strong partnerships with Lucene and Solr consultants, which may include systems integrators and implementation specialists. Second, we see a significant opportunity to partner with commercial entities that develop and sell products based on the Lucene/Solr cores. Lastly, we see other open source-based commercial entities such as MySQL, SugarCRM, and others as valuable partners to offer enhanced value-add offerings to enterprise customers.

Can you describe your offering?

Through the Lucid Imagination knowledge portal, we offer the following:

• Free Certified Distributions – Developers looking to improve on the reliability and predictability of their environment can now download complete, tested distributions of Solr and Lucene backed by a 30-day "Get-Started" support, at no charge.
• Support Subscriptions – Companies can purchase one of several commercial-grade support subscriptions for certified distributions as well as for the Apache versions, both at the same price.
• Training & Certification – Lucid Imagination's training, certification and education programs are offered as regularly scheduled three-day classes, or as customized, on-site engagements.
• Consulting Services – Lucid Imagination's high-level consulting services are customized, short-term engagements.
• Value-added Software – Lucid Imagination offers tools for Lucene and Solr. One such tool available now is LucidGaze for Solr, an open source visual framework for monitoring Solr performance.

Please refer to How We Can Help on the company website for more details.

Under what license are certified distributions of Lucene/Solr released?

Lucid Imagination's certified distributions contain several software modules. They include:

• Tested versions of Lucene and Solr code - which retain their Apache Software License.
• Certain open source 3rd party software components (e.g., Luke) retain their current license/s.
• Software developed by Lucid Imagination, but not contributed back to Apache, such as LucidGaze for Solr and Lucid's optimized version of Kstemmer are distributed under LGPL. All free.
   

What is the "Get-Started" program?

If you If you are relatively inexperienced with the Lucene/Solr technologies, Lucid Imagination has put together a free 30-day "Get Started" program to help guide you through your initial experience. Once you have registered and downloaded either LucidWorks for Lucene or LucidWorks for Solr from the Lucid Imagination website, you can submit your questions by email to the Lucid Imagination support team will respond to them in a timely manner.

The focus of this program is to help with first-time installation, configuration, and basic usage of Lucene/Solr and included utilities. The support team will provide either a direct answer, (if it can be answered briefly), or pointers to information or documentation that clarifies how to accomplish what you want to do. Lucid will also make every effort to provide you with guidelines for implementation, deployment and optimizations whenever possible.

The "Get Started" program is designed to assist users during the initial phase of their evaluation/project and is not meant to replace a commercial support subscription.

I've been getting by just fine using Lucene for free. Why would I want to pay for support?

Apache Lucene and Solr indeed have enjoyed great success since the projects were introduced several years ago. Much of this success has to do with its community. Many developers have gotten what they've needed from the community itself and we expect that this will continue to be the case.

We do believe, though, that there are thousands of current users that need, or can benefit from, the predictability of enterprise-grade products and services such as ready access to technical support, training, and expert consulting. Many of these developers work for companies that as a policy, require reliable, commercial-grade support for any technology they use in mission-critical applications. In addition, without the backing of a commercial entity, enterprises are at risk if their developers with Lucene expertise leave for other companies. Finally, we believe that the certified distributions and other value-add software we provide will further improve the productivity and cost-effectiveness of commercial projects.
 

How soon after a major release of Lucene will Lucid Imagination release a corresponding certified distribution?

We plan to release certified distributions of Lucene as quickly as possible. Typically, there will be a small time gap between the releases of Apache Lucene and certified Lucid Imagination distributions due to the additional testing and QA we need to conduct on our certified distributions.

How will Lucid Imagination keep up with the rapid evolution of Lucene core and modules?

Since Lucid Imagination is and will continue to be an active member of the Lucene community, we expect to easily keep up with new releases of the Apache Lucene and Solr.

Does Lucid Imagination offer indemnification against third party claims of intellectual property ownership for the Lucid Imagination certified software?

Lucid Imagination does intend to offer indemnification, at a later date. However, if you require it sooner, please contact support@lucidimagination.com.

What is Search Health Check?

The Lucid Search Health Check is a set of services designed to ensure your application is designed to meet the recommended best practices for search configuration, optimization and effectiveness. This essential periodic assessment of the use of Lucene or Solr within a search application uses a set of services based on a consistent, disciplined methodology of analysis and assessment designed to ensure an effective search solution with optimal performance. Lucid solution experts will initiate a discovery session with your developers and/or administrators to review your application and identify possible improvements. The deliverables will be an assessment and recommendation report that is based on an initial review. The following topics can be covered under the Search Health Check program (note that not all topics are applicable to all applications or customers):

• Identify business objectives and functional/technical requirements
• Indexing assessment
• Query analysis and recommendations
• Configuration and performance analysis and recommendations

The Search Health check is available through a variety of consulting and support packages.

If I make modifications to Lucene source code, can I still get support from Lucid Imagination?

Absolutely. As long as a company subscribes to support through Lucid Imagination, we will provide it regardless of whether it uses the community versions of Lucene/Solr or our certified distributions. Please refer to the Support Matrix for details.