Ask Jeeves Inc. made a move to extend its enterprise natural language search technology with the acquisition Monday of privately-held enterprise integration and interface software company Octopus Software Inc.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The new technology brought to the table by Octopus will allow Ask Jeeves to more easily connect its JeevesOne enterprise search software into enterprise business applications, according to Ask Jeeves officials in Emeryville, Calif.
Accessing enterprise data will be used not only for processing search requests but also to connect JeevesOne-based assisted selling systems into back-end systems. JeevesOne can currently only access unstructured data, such as HTML files and other document types. The addition of the Octopus technology will enable it to tap into structured transactional data as well.
Customers using JeevesOne would not only get recommendations, but could actually complete a transaction.
By the second quarter of 2002, Jeeves Solutions expects to integrate Octopus secure enterprise connectivity, support for leading technology standards and deployment tools for corporate IT and business users with JeevesOne. Deeper integration of the technologies is planned in third and fourth quarters.
“With Octopus, weve acquired world-class technology,” said Skip Battle, CEO of Ask Jeeves Inc. “Our challenge now is to integrate and leverage this technology to create a more powerful product in JeevesOne.”