Knowledge management has become a key component that companies look for in enterprise applications. Recognizing the need for software vendors to adequately address that trend, Verity Inc. has introduced an integration package that lets its original-equipment-manufacturer customers build Verity's search, categorization, and personalization technologies into their products.

Verity has more than 200 such customers whose products reach 150 million users; most of those manufacturers have relied on the Verity Developer Kernel, which lets them embed simple keyword search capabilities into applications. But the newest version of the vendor's K2 Developer essentially lets manufacturers integrate the capabilities of Verity's K2 knowledge-management platform, albeit with some limitations on deployments, to "provide a taste" of K2 and encourage consistent users to turn to Verity for additional services, says Verity chief technology officer Prabhakar Raghavan. "You don't want manufacturers to replace direct sales," he says. "You want them to be synergistic."

Manufacturers using the new platform say they like the ease of integration it provides. Until now, search engines traditionally have been standalone products that were difficult for software vendors to "knit" into their applications, says Michael Harris, senior VP of products and strategies for FileNet Corp. By the end of this year, FileNet will replace the search engine embedded in its enterprise content-management applications with Verity's technology.

For video-search vendor Virage Inc., the text-search capabilities provided in the platform are key because video search involves converting a lot of data into text--such as closed captioning, speech-to-text conversions, speaker identification, and on-screen text elements like sports scores and stock tickers. But what distinguishes the new K2 Developer platform, says Virage CEO Paul Lego, is the ease of integration for Verity's manufacturing customers. He says the two companies have a lot of customers in common, many of whom have been asking for better integration, and Verity provided the level of support needed to make that integration a smooth process. "It's not just making the two products work together," says Lego. "It's making them work well together."