Simplexo brings open source to enterprise search

A new open source search product takes advantage of the collective power of the developer community

IT buyers were given yet more choice in the enterprise search market today with the global launch of Simplexo Enterprise, a new offering giving firms the ability to search structured and unstructured data in real time.

Simplexo Enterprise is an open source product which utilises the indexing capabilities of existing databases and other legacy software.

This means that it has to index only unstructured data and can therefore save on resources, according to Simplexo chief executive Alistair Handyside.

Being open source, it can also take advantage of the collective power of the developer community which constantly tests, uses and upgrades the product, and feeds it back into future releases.

"We only have one focus: enterprise search," said Handyside. "We believe our offering differs because it searches structured and unstructured data in a single click. We are trying to make enterprise search easy."

The product is also able to integrate with organisations' existing search tools, according to Simplexo chief technology officer Simon Bain.

"If you've got an Autonomy index in place no-one will persuade you to tear it out because of the licence and implementation costs," he said.

"So we'll map to that index and search it … and we'll do the same for Documentum, OpenText and others."

Simplexo Enterprise also scans enterprise data in real time, which Bain argued will help return more accurate results, while security issues have been dealt with by including strong access controls.