Hummingbird EIP 1.0 from Hummingbird Communications Ltd. EIP is the newest entry into the EIP (enterprise information portal) market and builds on Hummingbird’s flagship information management product, DOCSFulcrum and is to provide a secure means of searching and retrieving enterprise data via centralized Web-based access.
With taxonomy indexing and flexible search capabilities, Hummingbird EIP is geared to expose data from a variety of sources, structured or otherwise, including groupware, e-mail, business applications, file systems, and Web sites. When users log on to Hummingbird EIP, they gain access to the sundry information resources existing across an enterprise – including multiple e-mail accounts, Microsoft Exchange Server stores, file systems, databases, and Web sites – consolidated and available for review from within their Web browsers.
At the heart of Hummingbird EIP’s capabilities is the DOCSFulcrum engine. The Knowledge Server, part of the software suite, analyzes data content and develops a server-based index of resources. The process greatly enhances the response times to search queries. The capability of brokering out queries to external search engines, such as AltaVista and InfoSeek, further extends the reach of available information.
Hummingbird EIP returns results that can be viewed in native format or as HTML, even if the native application does not exist on the local workstation. There are reportedly more than 200 recognized formats supported, including Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, and Lotus Notes.
The auto-taxonomy builder let’s users build a hierarchical view of the existing document base, separating resources into categories to improve browsing and search times. Hummingbird EIP updates the taxonomy as new documents are added.
Security is implemented using Hummingbird’s Common Authentication Proxy. The server provides single sign-on access across portal resources and natively supports common authentication schemes, including LDAP, NTLM (NT LanManager), and NDS.
Users can access the portal using the Java servlet to search resources and flexibly display data. Users can even customize their portal pages to best suit their needs.
Hummingbird EIP’s Java-based design uses XML for data interchange, enabling connectivity to any application or data source via its pluggable architecture, called e-Clips. The XML DTD (Document Type Definition) specifications and open API are also included with the package, allowing custom solutions to be programmed for extended availability to almost any existing information source. Furthermore, Hummingbird offers a large variety of portal-enabled add-ons that can integrate into EIP.
Hummingbird EIP is available for Windows NT and starts at $135,000. Hummingbird Communications Ltd. in Toronto can be reached at http://www.humingbird.com.
Prices listed are in Cdn currency.