Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

In a government endorsed move toward digitised educational resources, one of Holland's leading technical education institutions, the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) has contracted Autonomy to provide its Virage software to search and structure its online digital teaching material.

The deal, for an undisclosed sum, will enable students to follow, search and review various classes, lectures and research presentations online, posted on the college's website as part of new learning requirements encouraged by the Dutch government.

Students with an internet connection now have access to teaching material regardless of time or location, the metadata of which will be analysed encoded and indexed by Virage's Rich Media solution, removing the need for manual tagging.

“Thanks to Virage, students no longer have to spend hours searching for relevant information and can find the classes they want more quickly. Autonomy also prevents 800 lecturers from having to index the content themselves,” said Leon Huijbers, Head of Multimedia Services at TU Delft.

In a further announcement, members of US-based Covera's federal sales team have moved to Autonomy, following the sale of its RetrievalWare enterprise software business to Fast Search & Transfer. Autonomy's federal operations are to be based in the company's Falls Church, Virginia offices.

The Convera team members, who hold federal clearances to service and sell to the U.S. government community, include the VP of sales and operations, the VP of product engineering and the security program manager.

“This team has long been dedicated to serving the interests of Convera customers who represent the majority of the company's RetrievalWare revenue. It is important that these customers have access to continued support, advanced technology and cleared services personnel which Autonomy is uniquely able to provide,” said Autonomy CEO, Stouffer Egan.

The BT deal will see the telecomms giant use Autonomy technology for a number of search applications for the first time, to replace those licenced from Verity, which Autonomy acquired in 2005.