IBM and Yahoo tout free enterprise search tool

IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition provides support for 200 file types

IBM and Yahoo yesterday unveiled IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition, a free entry-level enterprise search software product designed to help firms to search across internal networks and the web.

The offering provides support for up to 500,000 documents per server, and more than 200 file types and documents in more than 30 languages.

Ovum analyst Mike Davis predicted that the offering would ruffle feathers amoung existing enterprise search players: "We believe that this could be highly disruptive in the enterprise search space. IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition is squarely aimed at the market targeted by Google with its Search Appliance (GSA) and Mini and Microsoft with its Office 2007 SharePoint Server for Search (MOSS). "

The free to download product offers basic search facilities using an interface already familiar to millions of Yahoo.com users. It will index up to 500,000 documents or web pages, supporting 200+ document types and 30 different languages.

OmniFind features a "three-click installation process and takes customers only minutes to go from download to live search and information access", according to the companies.

It incorporates the open source Lucene indexing library to provide cross-platform full text indexing.

"Organisations of all sizes are faced with the problem of too much information residing in different locations and in different formats, making it nearly impossible to quickly extract meaning," said Ambuj Goyal, general manager for information management at IBM Software Group.

"IBM and Yahoo are bringing clients closer to the reality of being able to use all of their information and analyse it to resolve customer issues, spot trends, recognise business opportunities and become more flexible."

IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition is available as a free download.