BALTIMORE, Sept. 21, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) announced that it has purchased the rights to proprietary software developed by Tucana Technologies, a software-products company specializing in using semantic technologies to integrate enterprise information. Northrop Grumman will market these technologies to government and commercial users seeking more efficient methods of sharing business data.
Tucana's software was created for advanced applications that use "metadata," or data which describes other information, to integrate information from different sources. This technology is based upon standards established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to form the basis of the "Semantic Web," which is the evolving next-generation of the Web. The Semantic Web is being developed through use of common protocol languages so that machines can find, sort and classify information more efficiently.
With the explosive expansion of the digital-data domain, the defense, intelligence, healthcare and financial industries are looking at semantic applications and technologies with great promise for addressing the challenge of "knowledge discovery." Tucana's technologies will enable a new generation of software applications that will allow for the organization and mining of vast amounts of data and deliver the ability to rapidly derive knowledge from previously uncorrelated events. The user communities will move from information processing to knowledge discovery.
"With the Tucana technology base, we now have a significant foundation from which to offer comprehensive Semantic Web applications to our defense, intelligence and homeland-defense customers," said Taylor W. Lawrence, sector vice president and general manager of Northrop Grumman's C4ISR and Space Sensors Division. "Knowledge discovery will become a standard feature of our Web-services-based systems in the command-and-control and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) markets."
"We are pleased by the acquisition of Tucana's software by Northrop Grumman, and confident what we have built will now have a much broader impact," said Bernadette Hyland, founder and former president and chief executive officer of Tucana Technologies. "We have had success as an independent company selling to government and commercial customers, but information-integration projects can be extensive in scope and core to the customer's operation. Northrop Grumman has the experience and depth to provide rapid results and benefits for its customers using the Tucana technology."
"Tucana was a leading implementer of key W3C standards," said David Wood, founder and former chief technical officer of Tucana Technologies. "I am pleased this technology is now offered and supported by Northrop Grumman, which can provide the resources needed to make it successful in the marketplace." Tucana received private equity funding from Avansis Ventures, Silverhaze Partners and Active Angel Venture Funds during 2004.
Tucana's technologies include the Tucana Knowledge Server, the Tucana Metadata Extraction Framework, Enterprise Management Console and associated documentation, training and business-development material. These products allow development of information-integration architectures, metadata registries, multi-level security solutions, link analysis and legacy database migration. Northrop Grumman will follow Tucana's lead in providing software that implements key W3C Semantic Web standards such as Resource Description Framework and the Web Ontology Language.
Northrop Grumman's C4ISR and Space Sensors Division is a leader in producing ISR robust software architectures and data management systems for military command and control applications. The division is a part of the company's Baltimore-based Electronic Systems sector, a world leader in the design, development and manufacture of defense and commercial electronic systems and sensors, including airborne radar, navigation systems, electronic countermeasures, precision weapons, airspace management systems, communications systems, space sensors, marine and naval systems, government systems and logistics services.
For further information, contact: Sales link: tucana.sales@ngc.com Sales: 1-410-765-7887