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Search vendor SurfRay back in business

15-Mar-2009

Tags: Enterprise Search, Selecting Technology, Vendor Viability & Financials, MondoSearch

About a month ago, I reported that SurfRay was in bankruptcy. It has only taken a few weeks, but it seems the company has been revived.

All of the assets where acquired by SurfRay 2009 A/S. (See the notification here while it lasts). The new company is backed by Vækstfonden ( "growth fund"), a "government backed investment fund" which says it's the largest venture capitalist in Scandinavia. Vækstfonden's Søren Pallesen has taken over the job of CEO of SurfRay (presumably while getting the company back in working shape).

While this bodes well for the future viability of the company, and the MondoSearch, Ontolica and BehaviorTracking products, the transition from bankrupted MondoSearch to bankrupted SurfRay hasn't done a lot of good for the company's development efforts (if only because many experienced staff left the company). In many references to the company's products, I see the words "solid technology" and Danish publication Computerworld said the company had "enormous growth potential" (billions, even, in a rather superfluous reference to Microsoft's FAST acquisition).

However, development of the software has been at a stand-still for at least the past three years. A lot has happened in that time. When I installed and tested the products for the review in the Search & Information Access Report last year, MondoSearch and Ontolica looked like they were a generation behind.

So while Surfray may now be returning to regularly scheduled programming, for now, expect reruns of old shows. It will take the company at least a year to even start getting the product development up to speed again -- and customers have plenty of solid alternatives.

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