Companies Driving Enterprise Search Innovation Showcase Results in FAST Webcast Series.

OSLO, Norway & NEEDHAM, Mass. -- AutoTrader.com, Factiva, National Instruments, Reed Business, TVGuide.com, and WeightWatchers.com Reveal Search-Driven Business Models

Fast Search & Transfer(TM) (FAST(TM)), the leading developer of enterprise search technologies and solutions, today announced a Webcast series featuring IDC Research Vice President Sue Feldman, who will moderate the first two Webcasts, and a select group of FAST's pioneering customers. Featured companies have strategically developed and implemented search-based applications to strengthen their market position, enter new markets, grow revenues and cut costs.

"Companies are just beginning to scratch the surface of understanding the positive impact that search solutions can have on their businesses," said Feldman. "We believe that search and its allied technologies like text and data analytics are quickly becoming the gateway to knowledge work of all kinds. This series will showcase that diversity. Search is fast becoming the ubiquitous answer to accessing structured and unstructured data, both behind and in front of corporate firewalls."

"With more than 2,600 global customers and 3,500 successful installations, FAST is working with its customers to push the envelope in enterprise search development," said Ali I. Riaz, president of FAST. "Our customers are creating the roadmap for the industry as they uncover the breadth and depth of business challenges that enterprise search solutions address."

To register for any of the following Webcasts, visit: www.fastsearch.com/webcasts

Featured Topics Include:

Reed Business: Tuesday, May 2 at 2:00 pm EDT 

Discover how Reed Business is winning the premium content war by transforming their business from content creator to vertical search content provider. Graeme McCracken, project director at Reed Business, will discuss how his company responded to Google by delivering their own state-of-the-art search model to showcase B2B content, generate new revenue, and deliver precise and relevant content designed to build a loyal user base.

National Instruments: Wednesday, May 17 at 2:00 pm EDT

Julie Schlembach, search program manager at National Instruments, will discuss how NI standardized its IT infrastructure on the FAST ESP(TM) platform, rolling out ten search-based applications in under six months. National Instruments is utilizing search company-wide for more than 3,800 employees and 25,000 customers - indexing a half-million internal documents and several hundred thousand more on its customer-facing sites. Also learn about the approach National Instruments is instituting to index 100 million records in its data warehouse as part of a business intelligence project intended to give managers a single view into customer activity.

AutoTrader.com: Tuesday, June 27 at 2:00 pm EDT

AutoTrader will explain how FAST ESP enabled the company to replace the existing Oracle database search, in addition to providing superior searching capabilities. As a result of offloading the search effort to FAST, AutoTrader significantly reduced their hardware costs.

TVGuide.com: Tuesday, July 25 at 2:00 pm EDT

Increasing site traffic and building deeper customer loyalty is a critical business objective of TVGuide.com. TVGuide.com will explain how search has created a unique user experience, as subscribers can now search the site's extensive structured and unstructured data sources, including text, documents, images and rich media assets.

WeightWatchers.com: Tuesday, August 15 at 2:00 pm EDT

With FAST ESP, WeightWatchers.com site visitors can now access and search the site's complete inventory of content, including articles, recipes and success stories. VP of Engineering, Mike Laginestra explains why his organization chose FAST ESP for its scalability, high-performance and the FAST team's willingness to work as a close partner to address the specific challenges of WeightWatchers.com. Since deploying FAST ESP, peak search traffic has increased by approximately 45 percent.

Factiva: Tuesday, September 26 at 2:00 pm EDT

Dennis Cahill, vice president of product at Factiva, will discuss the tangible competitive advantages every organization can realize by deploying enterprise-wide business intelligence solutions to better understand the latest news, market trends and industry developments. These solutions can now be personalized for role-specific users, helping them to make better decisions, faster, through improved speed and quality of queries.

About FAST

FAST is the leading developer of enterprise search technologies and solutions that are behind the scenes at the world's best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST's flexible and scalable enterprise search platform (FAST ESP) elevates the search capabilities of enterprise customers and connects people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium. This drives revenues and reduces total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure. FAST's solutions are used by more than 2,600 global customers and partners, including America Online (AOL), Cardinal Health, CareerBuilder.com, Chordiant, CIGNA, CNET, Computer Associates, Dell, EMC Documentum, Factiva, Fidelity Investments, Findexa, IBM, Knight Ridder, LexisNexis, Merrill Lynch, Rakuten, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Sensis, Stellent, Tenet Healthcare, Thomas Industrial Networks, T-Online, US Army, Virgilio (Telecom Italia), Vodafone, and Wanadoo.

FAST is headquartered in Norway and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The FAST Group operates globally with presence in Europe, the United States, Asia Pacific, Australia, South America, and the Middle East and Africa. For further information about FAST, please visit www.fastsearch.com.

(C) 2006 Fast Search & Transfer ASA - Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, FAST ESP, Contextual Insight and the FAST logo are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. All rights reserved.