Vivisimo
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Technology, Search engine software |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Founder | Chris Palmer, Jerome Pesenti, Raul Valdes-Perez |
| Defunct | May 2012 |
| Fate | Acquired by IBM |
| Headquarters | Pittsburgh , United States |
| Products | Clusty (search engine), Velocity (search platform) |
| Parent | IBM (from 2012) |
Vivisimo was a technology firm privately owned and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, specializing in the development of computer search engine technology. In May 2012, it was acquired by IBM and subsequently integrated into the IBM Watson Explorer platform within the IBM Watson Group. Vivisimo's public-facing web search engine called Clusty, a metasearch engine featuring document clustering, was transferred to Yippy, Inc. in 2010.
The company’s expertise lay in federated search and document clustering, allowing search outcomes to be organized contextually—for example, separating the term "cell" into categories like "biology," "battery," and "prison." Their software accommodated both structured and unstructured information types.
History
Established in 2000 by Carnegie Mellon University researchers Chris Palmer, Jerome Pesenti, and Raul Valdes-Perez, Vivisimo derived its name from the Spanish superlative vivísimo, which translates to "very lively" or "very clever."
In October 2008, Vivisimo won the contract to provide search capabilities for FirstGov.gov (currently known as USA.gov), the official online portal of the United States federal government.
To strengthen its Big Data analytics offerings, IBM purchased Vivisimo in 2012.
Products
Vivisimo’s Velocity platform was available as either an on-premises or cloud-hosted solution aimed at enterprise clients, government agencies, and OEM partners, supported by professional services. The Velocity platform incorporated social search functionalities that allowed users to tag, vote on, annotate, and share content; all user contributions were immediately indexed to enhance organizational search effectiveness.