Lucid Imagination is the first commercial entity exclusively dedicated to Apache Lucene/Solr open source technology. The Lucid Imagination founding team consists of several key contributors and committers to the Lucene project, as well as experts in enterprise search application development.

The Lucene search library currently ranks among the top 15 open source projects, and with over 4,000 enterprise installations, it is fast becoming a serious contender in the enterprise search arena. Downloads have also grown immensely over recent years, with a current run-rate of over 6,000 downloads a day.

The Solr search server, which provides application builders a ready-to-use search platform on top of the Lucene search library, is the fastest growing Lucene sub-project. Apache Lucene/Solr offers an attractive alternative to the proprietary licensed search and discovery software vendors.

There are several reasons for the popularity and adoption of Lucene/Solr technology:

• Best practice relevancy ranking
• Superior query performance (query speed and throughput)
• Proven scalability (e.g. running production search at MySpace, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Comcast Interactive Media, Apple, Technorati, Internet Archive, Netflix)
• Superior flexibility and customisability (well-written and easily modified)
• Low cost (open source)
• No vendor lock-in (open source)

What are the Benefits of Using Lucene / Solr Enterprise Search?

Lower Costs

Too many commercial enterprise search vendors are costing too many companies too much money, from big hardware footprints to per-query and per-document charges, extra charges for unnecessary features and exorbitant license fees. Now, with Lucene/Solr open source search, there is a better way; it even has an attractive software license price point: free!

Lower Risk

After almost 10 years of development to the exacting standards of open-source peer review and innovation, with deployment in a large, diverse, and demanding set of application use cases, Lucene is mature and proven technology. Over 4,000 companies have adopted Lucene/Solr to date, with successful deployments in mission critical environments including Guardian News and Media, AOL, Netflix, Zappos, Nike, Yelp, Whitehouse.gov, MTV Networks, and The Motley Fool.

Receive a More Flexible Productive Search

With Lucene and Solr you have complete access to source code and full control of all aspects of search including relevancy. This means that you can adapt the codebase to your unique company needs, processes, and applications.

Enable Innovation

Iterate new changes quickly at a low cost of experimentation using open source software, with no licensing issues.

Improve Search Quality and Relevancy

Lucene and Solr provide strong relevance ranking to deliver contextually relevant and accurate results very quickly. Tailor-made coding for relevancy ranking and sophisticated search capabilities like faceted search can help your users sort, organise, classify, and structure retrieved information to ensure that their searches deliver the results they want.

Drive Search Performance and Scalability

Scalability is a key factor for getting a positive ROI on your search application. You are not asked to pay unnecessary penalties for growing the breadth of your data or the count of documents to be searched. The search application should be able to grow with the requirements of the organisation, without requiring big investments in hardware to match pace with that growth.

Harness the Power of Open Source

No licensing fees or costs are involved. The Apache Software License used by Lucene/Solr allows users to modify or embed the technology as they see fit, and to keep proprietary, sell and or re-distribute any add-ons they develop. As one of the top 15 open source projects, Lucene has a very active and thriving user community, with over 4,000 customer deployments. Contributions from across a diverse set of applications and users results in more innovation, fewer bugs, code that is more stable and more thoroughly road-tested, easier-to-integrate, and a broad, rich feature set.