Squiz Acquires Leading Australian Search Company Funnelback to Deliver More Sophisticated
and Intuitive Enterprise-Class Search Solutions
3rd July 2009
Squiz today announced its acquisition of the enterprise search engine technology and services
company Funnelback at a private executive seminar event in London.
Funnelback’s flagship product Funnelback Enterprise is an integrated, high value, industrial strength
search solution that searches content assets across internet, intranet, database and shared network
drives, as well as electronic document management and portal systems. It is used in some of the
most demanding web environments by a broad range of customers including the Australian Federal
Government, Oxfam and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Squiz’s acquisition of the company
will bring this leading edge search technology to the global MySource Matrix customer base, helping
Squiz’s growing portfolio of high end enterprise web site customers to deliver more sophisticated and
intuitive end user search solutions.
Funnelback will remain trading as a separate company and retain its own brand. “There will be no
changes to company structure, staffing or strategy aside from an increased focus on close integration
with MySource Matrix. Funnelback is doing a great job and our technologies complement each other
enormously,” said Squiz Managing Director and founder, John-Paul Syriatowicz. Financial details of
the acquisition were not disclosed.
Syriatowicz continued: “As organisations continue their inevitable move towards browser-centric
information management, powerful, fully-integrated search will play an increasingly important role. I
believe 2010 will herald a fundamental shift in the content management systems (CMS) and search
marketplace as clients and vendors realise the two are inseparable. Trying to treat them as discrete
solutions simply doesn’t work.”
Funnelback’s search technology was originally developed by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific
and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) before being spun off as a CSIRO owned company for
commercialisation and further development. Karl Rodrigues, Investment Portfolio Manager for the
CSIRO said “Funnelback has produced some tremendous technology and Squiz is the right partner to
bring their offering to the world stage. I see this acquisition as a tremendous opportunity for both
Australian companies”.
“I’m really excited about the opportunities for Funnelback’s search product here in the UK but also
Europe and the US” said Steve Morgan, Director Squiz UK. “There’s a significant gap in the
enterprise search and CMS market and Funnelback fills it by delivering reduced implementation times
and lower costs.”
“This is a remarkable opportunity for both companies and our clients. Squiz’s MySource Matrix and
Funnelback already integrate well together so many of the benefits are immediately available to our
clients,” said Stuart Beil, Executive Director of Funnelback. “The added resources provided by Squiz
will allow us to improve our offering to Australian clients and also help Funnelback become a global
brand.”
About Squiz
Squiz is one of the world’s largest privately owned content management companies with offices
throughout Australia, the U.K. also New Zealand, Europe and the U.S. later this year. Squiz is the
author of MySource Matrix, an enterprise class, Supported Open Source content management
system used by governments, universities and corporations around the world. For more see
About Funnelback
Funnelback creates a powerful search engine of the same name used to search many web sites and
Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s iconic portal (www.abc.net.au). For more see
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) formed in 1926 and
now employing around 6500 people, has become Australia’s premier research organisation, with an
extensive track-record of breakthrough technologies. With more than 160 existing companies founded
through CSIRO technology and many others utilising CSIRO innovations, CSIRO has become one of
the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world. For more information see www.csiro.au.
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