Neuf Cegetel

November 2007

Press release

Neuf Cegetel, the number one alternative-communications company in France for fixed telecommunications, chooses Pertimm technology for its new search engine.

Paris, November 30, 2007 – To improve the accessibility of all of its resource materials, Neuf Cegetel, the number one alternative-communications company in France for fixed telecommunications, has chosen the Pertimm Enterprise Edition search engine for its nearly 4,000 employees.

Objective: a high-performance internal search engine

Up until now, all Neuf Cegetel employees carried out their searches via a search engine developed in-house, which did not allow the user to search office-automation documents and did not have the capacity for linguistic and semantic enrichment, which is now essential.

A necessary and strategic change

Neuf Cegetel wanted a more powerful search engine to facilitate searches and guide users more quickly to pertinent documents, as well as to enhance all of the data and content that is produced on a daily basis by the company's staff members and made available on the intranet.

Among Neuf Cegetel’s requirements for the search engine was the possibility of integrating it into the already-existing system, without having to modify the network infrastructure already in place. This had to be done while respecting the company's graphics charter. The company also needed a search engine that would interface with its authorization-management system and respect the access rights set by the company.

Pertimm Enterprise Edition

Neuf Cegetel has chosen Pertimm’s linguistic and semantic search engine: the Pertimm Enterprise Edition. Close collaboration between Neuf Cegetel's intranet team and Pertimm's engineers throughout the entire integration process made it possible to successfully complete this project, while at the same time facilitating training. Only one day was needed to train those persons in charge of running the Pertimm search engine.

The new search engine allows its users to search:

• All the intranet documents, regardless of format (PDF, DOC, Text, XML, etc.).
• The items stored in an ORACLE database.
• The documents published on the internal network's web pages.
• The newsletters published by the company.
• Finally, a list of specialized applications specific to Neuf Cegetel.

The incremental updating system that is part of the Pertimm solution quickly takes into account new documents, modifications and deletions. It also archives the existing documents.

The search engine's personalization system enables it to respect the already existing graphics charter, both carrying out searches and displaying results.

The main hurdle: respecting a complex security schema

With the intranet being a comprehensive, central resource for the company and accessible to all personnel, the management of the users' access rights was of critical importance for this project.

Pertimm needed to integrate the Neuf Cegetel infrastructure and respect the already existing security schema. This challenge was successfully met by the Pertimm Enterprise Edition because it offers perfect interoperability with the single sign-on (SSO) system already in place on the intranet and allows for the real-time modification of authorizations that are centralized in the Neuf Cegetel directory.

An ever-evolving technical architecture

With this new search engine, Pertimm provides Neuf Cegetel with an ever-evolving solution, suited to both its current and future needs. Access to the research interface via the WebService mode provides numerous possibilities for establishing future interconnections with other company applications.

Key data

• A perpetual licence, with the number of users updated annually.
• 3,000 to 4,000 sections divided into four categories:
  • Documents present in the file management system and referenced in the Oracle database.
  • Documents present in the file management system and referenced in the LDAP directory.
  • Documents only present in the Oracle database.
  • Documents only present in the file management system.
• Nearly 4,000 internal Neuf Cegetel users.
• 300 user groups.
• 500 user sessions (at peak, over one hour).

About Pertimm

Pertimm is a French software publisher that was started in 1997 by a team of three engineers. It specializes in multimedia search engines, using linguistics and semantics to allow for the "sharing of knowledge", whatever the nature, structure or organization of the data support.

With locations in both France (Asnières-sur-Seine and Valence) and the United States, the Pertimm team is made up of a team of twenty staff members. In 2004, the company was awarded Anvar's Innovative Start-Up label.

About Neuf Cegetel

The Neuf Cegetel group is France's leading alternative communications company. It boasts its own national network of fiber-optic cables totaling nearly 30,000 miles and has heavily invested in increasing its DSL network. Neuf Cegetel is therefore able to provide high-speed Internet access, while controlling costs, ensuring quality and directly marketing its services to nearly 70% of the targeted population. Present in all market segments, Neuf Cegetel offers a wide range of innovative services to private individuals and companies, as well as to telecommunications and Internet professionals. Neuf Cegetel, whose two principal shareholders are the Louis Dreyfus group and SFR, recorded sales of €2,897 billion in 2006.

Pertimm press contact

Silvy Bikok
Tél. : 01 47 33 88 49

Neuf Cegetel press contact

presse@neufcegetel.info