The truth shall set you freeVerity is a leading provider of software solutions that power business portals. Founded in 1988, Verity today enlists an army of partners and licensees in the publishing and software industries to implement the company's search technology in their product lines. For Verity, necessity was the mother of high tech invention. When Michael Pliner, who co-founded and headed Sytek, joined Advanced Decision Systems (ADS), he found that the firm was using an archaic text-retrieval program. Pliner suggested rewriting it to accommodate topic-based queries, which would then be routed to a host database. With help from John Lehman, Clifford Reid, and other eager venture capitalists, Pliner launched Verity.
Dollar sign dilemma
The company's premiere product, Topic, designed to seek and retrieve text stored in computer networks and on the Internet and debuted late in 1988. However, the software failed to set the company's finances on fire (it didn't even turn a profit - this at a time when investors expected solid high tech companies to flourish). In a last-ditch attempt to revive the fledgling enterprise, Verity hired Philippe Courtot as CEO. Courtot's first move was to slash prices in order to make products accessible to more users. He increased the research and development budget by 30% and started a program to inculcate the company's search engine into a large volume of 3rd-party applications. In 1996 Verity entered into agreements with software producers Informix and Sybase and later that year sought expansion via the purchase of UK groupware developer InSite Computer Technology.
Getting stronger
Verity's products are currently used by more than 1,000 corporations, government agencies, e-commerce sites, online service providers, internet publishers, and software developers worldwide. The company's alliances are becoming increasingly extensive. Verity now has agreements or partnerships with Adobe Systems, AT&T, Broadvision, the Bureau of National Affairs, CNET, Cisco, Compaq, Dow Jones, Easy GmbH, Ernst & Young, Financial Times, IBM, MD Consult, NewsEdge Corporation, Informix, iXL Inc., Lotus, NEC, Netscape Communications, Oracle, Regent Pacific Management, SAP, Siemens Nixdorf, Sybase, Tandem, Time Warner's Pathfinder, WeddingChannel.com, and Yahoo!, among others. In January 1999, the Xerox Corporation adopted Verity's Information Server and Verity Spider. April 1999 marked another partnership, this one between Verity and EarthWeb, a provider of Internet-based online services to the IT industry. EarthWeb will use Verity as the core information retrieval technology for its web site. The company has also sought to increase its Asia Pacific presence by opening an office in Sydney, Australia.
Furthermore, Delphi Consulting presented Verity with a Market Recognition Award based on a survey of 600 corporate users in 1999. That same year, Open Systems Advisors presented the Verity Information Server with the Crossroads 99 A-List Award for Knowledge Management. The Crossroads A-List Awards recognize best-of-the-breed enterprise products based on customer reviews. Recent Verity accolades also have included the Best Core Competency Award from Software Business Magazine, and the "1999 Large Company Turnaround of the Year" award from the Turnaround Management Association.
Portal people
In 2000 the company unveiled Verity Portal One, "a business portal solution" that provides companies with capabilities including personalization, search, and unified access to multiple information sources. The company's new focus on portals can be strongly credited to CEO Gary Sbona, who joined the company in 1998.
Trouble looming?
A class-action lawsuit filed in January 2000 by Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP charged Verity with withholding pertinent information from sharholders. Verity has denied such allegations of misrepresentation, however. A decision against Verity could overshadow the company's User Conference 2000 that will take place this fall in Orlando, Florida. The conference will exhibit companies that have succeeded by using Verity software.
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