New: Strengthen Platform Stability and Performance with Lucidworks Fusion

I’m thrilled to share the new developments in Lucidworks Fusion’s latest release, Fusion 5.11. We’re constantly striving to empower you with cutting-edge AI-powered search capabilities — and make it easy to stay informed about our advancements. Here are the details you need to know: 

What’s New in Fusion 5.11

1. Platform Support for Kubernetes 1.27 and Solr 9.4

Fusion 5.11, now available, enhances stability and performance through component updates supporting Solr 9.4 and Kubernetes 1.27. Dive into the latest features of Solr 9.4 and Kubernetes 1.27 by checking out the official Apache Solr reference guide and Kubernetes’ v1.27 blog.

2. Lucidworks AI Beta Enhancements

Fusion 5.11 introduces two exciting enhancements to Lucidworks AI, currently in closed beta: Named Entity Recognition (NER) for Generative AI and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) powered by open-source LLMs.

Lucidworks AI’s NER enhancement provides deeper insights, improving information retrieval precision for search relevancy and keyword generation. Furthermore, securing open-source LLMs empowers clients to retain control over their data by storing LLMs locally instead of sharing them with third-party AI providers, such as Google or OpenAI.

3. Five New Fusion Connectors

Since the time between Fusion 5.10 and Fusion 5.11, we’ve released five new connectors to the market, each with specific improvements:

• Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) V2 v1.1.0: JWT token authentication support
• JDBC V2 v2.5.0: Exposes configuration options for the validation timeout, resolves bugs around incremental crawl document deletion
• Kaltura V2 v1.3.0: Adds back the Kaltura External Media Entry Compare Attribute
• LDAP-ACLs V2 v2.0: Indexes Access Control List information for use by other connectors
• SharePoint Optimized V2 v2.0: Retrieves content and metadata from on-premise and cloud-based SharePoint repositories

Please note: Lucidworks’ connectors are not dependent on Fusion’s quarterly releases and come out iteratively throughout the year. Our connector releases are announced within our monthly Client Newsletters and available on our documentation site with detailed information about its background and configuration.

Lucidworks Fusion Product Roadmap for 2024

As we dive into 2024, Lucidworks Fusion is gearing up for an exciting journey, focusing on key themes to enhance user experience and functionality. Let’s break down the highlights of what’s on the horizon:

• Platform Scalability: Lucidworks Fusion continues its commitment to scalability and reliability. Expect continued enhancements to connectors, with a special emphasis on search and AI. The much-anticipated Lucidworks AI product is set to hit General Availability (GA) midway through the year, providing a powerful tool for all clients. Additionally, neural hybrid search will make its move into GA, with ongoing iterations throughout the year.
• Experience Tooling: Under the theme of experience tooling, Lucidworks Fusion is doubling down on improvements to predictive merchandiser, experience optimizer, and the app studio product. Anticipate significant enhancements starting mid-year based on user feedback, aimed at delivering a more intuitive and efficient experience.
• Advanced Analytics: Lucidworks Fusion recognizes the importance of advanced analytics and is committed to expanding this key capability. Advanced analytics will be integrated into tooling, specifically under predictive merchandiser and experience optimizer, offering users valuable insights.
• Streamlining Time to Value: Efficiency is at the forefront of Lucidworks Fusion’s goals. The focus is on reducing the time to value by making features more readily available out of the box. Simpler and smoother upgrade processes are also in the works, ensuring a hassle-free experience for users.
• Improved Customer Experience: Throughout the year, users can look forward to a series of UI and UX improvements aimed at simplifying the tooling and giving it a modern look.
• Connectors and Lucidworks AI Release Pattern: Connectors will see continuous improvement, with additions such as a rest connector and Salesforce V2 connector. These will be released independently of Fusion updates. Lucidworks AI follows a similar release pattern, with features and capabilities released iteratively, ensuring quick access for users without waiting for future releases.
• Lucidworks AI GA: Lucidworks AI, currently in closed beta, has garnered overwhelming response and interest. The beta program is already at full capacity, and the AI product is now available for managed customers. Feedback from clients indicates a strong demand for neural hybrid search (a unique search methodology that combines semantic vector search with best-in-class lexical search techniques). The team is actively working on implementations, including document summarization and explorations into conversational search use cases.

Fusion 5.11 Release Resources

Fusion 5.11 follows a rapid release schedule, with six months of support starting from its release date. Support began on January 3rd, 2024, and continues until July 3rd, 2024. For detailed information on Lucidworks’ support policies and Fusion 5.11 release notes, visit our documentation site.

Lucidworks Fusion is dedicated to pushing boundaries, and Fusion 5.11 is a testament to our commitment to delivering innovation and excellence. Be sure to follow along on this exciting journey!