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Kanisa Inc. struck another blow for consolidation in the search space with the acquisition of AskJeeves Inc.s Jeeves Solutions enterprise software business unit Wednesday. The deal is valued at $4.25 million.
Kanisa, a customer-service software company based in Cupertino, Calif., gets Jeeves Solutions JeevesOne platform, a natural language search product typically used for online customer self-service applications. Company officials said JeevesOne will enable Kanisa to expand its own customer service offerings while gaining access to JeevesOnes 35 customers.
The acquisition was hardly surprising as Emeryville, Calif.-based AskJeeves has increasingly focused on its profitable Web search business and was thought to be shopping around its underperforming enterprise search business for some time.
In its most recent quarter, ended March 31, AskJeeves Web properties accounted for $21.6 million of the companys $25.2 million in revenues. Jeeves Solutions revenues slumped to just $3.6 million from $5.3 million the same period the year before.
The move follows Verity Inc.s acquisition of enterprise search technology from Inktomi Corp. late last year and Overture Services Inc.s acquisitions in February of both Alta Vista Co. and Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) Inc.s AllTheWeb.com search property.
Kanisa President and CEO Bruce Armstrong pledged in a letter to Jeeves Solutions customers to continue to develop, sell and support Jeeves Solutions technologies and keep most of the Jeeves Solutions engineering, support, services, sales and marketing teams. He said that post-acquisition Kanisa would have an engineering, support and services team three times the size of Jeeves Solutions.
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