By Gail Repsher Emery Staff Writer
Convera Corp. has landed a $1.5 million investment from In-Q-Tel Inc., the CIA-funded private venture capital group, the company announced this week.
Convera develops search, retrieval and categorization software for enterprises and government agencies.
The company will use the money to enhance its products to address critical IT challenges facing the intelligence community, officials said. The products Convera develops will be made available over the next six months and are broadly applicable to intelligence agencies as well as state and local governments implementing centers for homeland security, according to the two companies.
Convera's RetrievalWare search, retrieval and categorization solutions allow users to search vast stores of unstructured information in more than 200 forms of text, video, image and audio in more than 45 languages.
The products being developed by Convera represent new source and search capabilities specifically suited for the intelligence community, said Pat Condo, president and chief executive officer of Convera.
"We chose Convera because we see tremendous opportunities to leverage their RetrievalWare open platform for enterprise search, and ease and speed of integration that it offers. The ability to plug in multiple capabilities, including multimedia and third party applications, make Convera particularly attractive for supporting customization needs of the national security market," said Gilman Louie, chief executive officer of In-Q-Tel.
Convera's government business has grown 28 percent over the last year, according to the company. More than 200 government customers, including the FBI, Customs Service and the departments of Justice, Defense and State, use its search technology.
In-Q-Tel's mission is to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests.
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