ISYS Search Software is a global leader in high performance enterprise search software and universal information access solutions. The company develops a suite of search, mobile access and information management infrastructure technologies.
Established in 1988 by Ian Davies, ISYS Search Software developed a prototype text retrieval software that would be suitable for use in large databases. The Australian market for the prototype software developed, and in 1991, PC Week Magazine wrote a favourable review that assisted in attempts to break into the US market.[1]
An ownership interest held by the wife of Australia's federal shadow communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, created some political discussion in 2010, as the Government asserted that Turnbull had a conflict of interest between his shadow partfolio and his personal financial stake in ISYS.
ISYS products compete with the Verity Ultraseek product and the Google Search Appliance, while its infrastructure and embedded search applications compete with Autonomy and FAST Search & Transfer (now a subsidiary of Microsoft).
The ISYS engine is capable of searching multiple disparate data sources, including Microsoft Office, WordPerfect, Open Office, HTML, ZIP files, all major email products, all SQLdata sources, SharePoint, Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino amongst others. Some of ISYS's content mining capabilities include automatic Categorization, entity extraction, parametric search, Hit-highlighting and navigation, relevance ranking and multiple query methods.
In 2007, ISYS entered the Linux marketplace with the release of the ISYS:sdk and ISYS:web server for Linux platforms, the company’s first foray into non-Windows environments. In 2009, ISYS released several new applications and a new suite for information access (see applications listed above).
In 2011, ISYS released its file readers (ISYS Document Filters) as a separately licensable product, competing directly with Oracle and Hewlett-Packard, the only other two vendors of file reader technology.