Lucid Imagination
Encyclopedia
Lucid Imagination is a Redwood City, California
-based company offering commercial support, consulting, training and value-add software for open source Apache Lucene
and Apache Solr
search technologies. Lucid Imagination is a private company founded in 2007 and publicly launched on January 26, 2009. The company received Series A funding from Granite Ventures
and Walden International in Sept 2008; In-Q-Tel
is a strategic investor.
The company follows a Professional Open Source model
to target organizations evaluating or already using the Apache Lucene/Solr open source search platform for their search applications. The company also offers several free, certified distributions of Lucene and Solr, which include additional utilities, bug fixes, and performance enhancements. Apache Lucene and Solr originally established a following without commercial support; however, as the market adoption for commercially supported open source grows, enterprise search application developers have sought similar models for these applications as well.
The Lucid Imagination founding technical team consists of Marc Krellenstein, a veteran in the enterprise search industry and several key contributors and committers to the Lucene project such as Grant Ingersoll, Erik Hatcher, and Yonik Seeley, in addition to advisor Doug Cutting
.
business model
based on open code, development within a community, professional quality assurance
, and subscription-based customer support
. They produce open-source code, so more programmers can make further adaptations and improvements. They also provide certified distributions to increase customer confidence in the apache distributions.
Lucid Imagination sells subscriptions for the support, training, and integration services that help customers in using open-source software. Customers can buy support in packages according to the level of support needed.
Lucid Imagination offers one month of free support in their "get started" program to all developers downloading their certified distributions. They also offer open source tools and utilities including Lucid Gaze that helps developers with insights into their own lucene implementation.
Redwood City, California
Redwood City is a California charter city located on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California, approximately 27 miles south of San Francisco, and 24 miles north of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans from its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people, to its tradition as a port for...
-based company offering commercial support, consulting, training and value-add software for open source Apache Lucene
Lucene
Apache Lucene is a free/open source information retrieval software library, originally created in Java by Doug Cutting. It is supported by the Apache Software Foundation and is released under the Apache Software License....
and Apache Solr
Solr
Solr is an open source enterprise search platform from the Apache Lucene project. Its major features include powerful full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, dynamic clustering, database integration, and rich document handling...
search technologies. Lucid Imagination is a private company founded in 2007 and publicly launched on January 26, 2009. The company received Series A funding from Granite Ventures
Granite Ventures
Granite Ventures is a venture capital firm with offices in San Francisco, California. Granite's predecessor H&Q Venture Associates, founded in 1992, was the venture capital investment arm of Hambrecht & Quist, a leading technology oriented investment bank...
and Walden International in Sept 2008; In-Q-Tel
In-Q-Tel
In-Q-Tel of Arlington, Virginia, United States is a not-for-profit venture capital firm that invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability...
is a strategic investor.
The company follows a Professional Open Source model
Professional open-source
Professional open-source is an open source software business model where an open source software vendor generates revenue from paid professional services, maintenance and support provided along with the software...
to target organizations evaluating or already using the Apache Lucene/Solr open source search platform for their search applications. The company also offers several free, certified distributions of Lucene and Solr, which include additional utilities, bug fixes, and performance enhancements. Apache Lucene and Solr originally established a following without commercial support; however, as the market adoption for commercially supported open source grows, enterprise search application developers have sought similar models for these applications as well.
The Lucid Imagination founding technical team consists of Marc Krellenstein, a veteran in the enterprise search industry and several key contributors and committers to the Lucene project such as Grant Ingersoll, Erik Hatcher, and Yonik Seeley, in addition to advisor Doug Cutting
Doug Cutting
Douglass Read Cutting is an advocate and creator of open-source search technology. He originated Lucene and, with Mike Cafarella, Nutch, both open-source search technology projects which are now managed through the Apache Software Foundation. He holds a bachelor's degree from Stanford University....
.
Business model
Lucid Imagination partly operates on a professional open-sourceProfessional open-source
Professional open-source is an open source software business model where an open source software vendor generates revenue from paid professional services, maintenance and support provided along with the software...
business model
Business model
A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value...
based on open code, development within a community, professional quality assurance
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance, or QA for short, is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service or facility to maximize the probability that minimum standards of quality are being attained by the production process...
, and subscription-based customer support
Customer support
Customer support is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product....
. They produce open-source code, so more programmers can make further adaptations and improvements. They also provide certified distributions to increase customer confidence in the apache distributions.
Lucid Imagination sells subscriptions for the support, training, and integration services that help customers in using open-source software. Customers can buy support in packages according to the level of support needed.
Lucid Imagination offers one month of free support in their "get started" program to all developers downloading their certified distributions. They also offer open source tools and utilities including Lucid Gaze that helps developers with insights into their own lucene implementation.
Awards
- Finalist for the 2010 Red Herring 100 North America Award
- Lucid Imagination Congratulates Apache Solr on InfoWorld Bossie Award Win
External links
- Corporate website
- Lucid blog
- Apache Lucene website
- Grant's Grunts: Lucene Edition Blog by Grant Ingersoll, member of founding technical team
- Solr 'n Stuff Blog by Yonik Seeley, member of founding technical team
- Lucid aims to be top open source enterprise search player - Paula Rooney, ZDNet, January 25, 2009
- Startup Provides Commercial Support for Lucene-based Search – Chris Kanaracus, IDG News, January 26, 2009
- Getting Lucene Down to Business With Lucid Imagination - Jack Germain, LinuxInsider, February 20, 2009
- Steven Arnold Q&A with Marc Krellenstein, Lucid Imagination co-founder and CTO March 17, 2009