Backchat - Flashback: February 2001. We look back to a time when the dotcom bandwagon had yet to hit the buffers ...

Border brushed aside by business information

We had Irish cross-border friendship and co-operation on our minds as we saluted the launch of a new Northern Ireland-Eire business information service five years ago. Our photo showed former President Bill Clinton in jolly accord with Gerry Adams and Bertie Ahern, as we waxed lyrical about a new database with details of more than 355,000 Irish companies. Available from ENKI Information Systems, the Paragon database offered "a unified point of reference for all of Ireland". Checking out the website today (www.paragoninfo.ie), nothing seems to have changed. No press release has been posted since May 2000 and you can almost see the tumbleweed rolling by. Inside the issue, we also introduced a new Italian stallion on the business information block, a company called Cerved. Its product, Bridge, claimed to be the first internet database to provide detailed data in English from the Italian chambers of commerce. Cerved still exists today (www.cerved.com), claiming a client list of 14,000 globally.

Factiva embarks on search quest

It seems appropriate that Groundhog Day falls in February, as five years after a news story headed "Factiva's new Search Module" appeared in IWR, we find ourselves testing the latest Factiva search technology (see page 25). "This is the latest addition to Factiva's Integration Suite," we wrote back in 2001, "which is designed to make it easy to integrate Factiva content into customer intranets and web portals." Factiva deputy CEO Claude Green explained: "The idea is that you don't leave your desktop. It's there as part of your standard workflow." As with most things, Factiva seemed ahead of the game. Offering customisation consultancy with the new search module also meant a way forward for the two ...