Lucid Imagination, the commercial company that distributes its own certified versions of the open source Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technology, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from a series of venture capital firms. Altogether, this brings Lucid’s total funding to $16 million.

Lucid also provides a number of open-source testing and performance monitoring tools for Lucene. Lucid's customers include Nike and Netflix. Launched only in 2009, the company claims revenue in the “millions."

The advent of additional funding should contribute to Lucid's viability, which is welcome news to customers. But you should also understand that for small companies with major VC funding, there's typically an exit for the investors somewhere (perhaps three to five years) out on the horizon.  That typically means the company will eventually sell itself to somebody bigger -- maybe much bigger. So if you go with Lucid Imagination, understand that such a transition may lie in your future, and those always bring risks. (Of course, we'd caution the same thing for other similar ventures as well, such as Alfresco.)

For critical analysis about the pros and cons of Lucene, Solr, and Lucid Imagination, be sure to consult our Search and Information Access Research.