Today sees the official launch of Conjungo, a technology supplier search engine aimed at companies who are looking for local or specialist suppliers of business technologies.

Over 15,000 companies are in the database already and Conjungo wants to become the natural port of call for anyone wanting to find trustworthy, relevant and local ICT (information technology and communications) suppliers. The search mechanism is simple and powerful, delivering what you want (assuming it’s there) in a few seconds.

You can filter results by any combination of geography, expertise and the supplier’s market focus. Sometimes you need to be a bit flexible in case the supplier doesn’t list every last thing they do. I went searching for various kinds of specialist in Ruislip (where I used to live) and didn’t always get a result. But broadening to the local main town did the trick and even just searching on Ruislip produced a small crop of prospects to sift through. (Rather frivolously, I also tried Jamaica, but drew a blank there.)

Several major hardware and software vendors have provided details of all their resellers to Conjungo. Resellers and system integrators can also elect to add themselves to the database. Looking at the list, I notice BT, Symantec, Adobe, Citrix and SMC are among the vendors who have participated in the scheme.

This seems like such a good idea, and so professionally executed that it can’t be long before some of the really big names come on board. And, even if they don’t, it seems like a sensible idea for ICT suppliers to put themselves forward anyway. All listings are free although, as you might imagine, premium listings and promotions are available too.

The company was founded by David Cruse who, with a background of running small to medium businesses, realised that general purpose search engines were nigh-on hopeless for finding the right sort of partners for IT and communications services. And vendors, by and large, just weren’t equipped to allow searches of their reseller data.

It’s early days for Conjungo, but they’re a decent bunch of people with a good idea which is well implemented. I don’t normally do this, but I wish them every success.