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25 Nov 2008
Enterprise search buyers are finally being offered products that are easier to configure, install and implement, according to new research by independent analyst firm CMS Watch.
The firm's Search & Information Access Report 2009 features interviews with global enterprise search customers in which 20 leading products were evaluated.
The findings suggest that search firms once notorious for the complexity of their technologies now provide customers with easy-to-use web interfaces to control the software and indexing capabilities.
"The main thing is that people started to get fed up with toolboxes which you had to configure, install and implement," said report author Adriaan Bloem. " Even the more complex vendors such as Autonomy and Endeca are putting in graphical interfaces for configuration."
These larger search vendors which sell more complex software will remain popular among certain customers with sophisticated environments, although they are being pushed all the time to make their products easier to implement and use, according to Bloem.
The research warned that vendors unable to prove that they will be able to index disparate repositories within a three-month proof-of-concept period will fall off enterprise shortlists.
Jean Ferré, chief executive at enterprise search vendor Sinequa, agreed that companies have grown tired of high-maintenance and unmanageable search tools.
"New approaches to enterprise search have challenged expectations about the benefits search can deliver to businesses," he explained.
"This new era of openness is a result of two key factors: end users now recognising search as mission critical; and market innovation around connectivity and relevancy."
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SharePoint enterprise search
Enterprise search is one of the main part of SharePoint for organisations to increase productivity and reduce information overload by providing their employees, partners, and customers the ability to find relevant content in a wide range of repositories and formats.
Posted by: sge 26 Nov 2008
One important enterprise search segment is missing - Brainware
Phil, great story on enterprise search, thank you! CMS search is a great resource; it has a very knowledgeable team. However, the report has one important limitation: it studies only the traditional search engines that rely on keyword recognition. Yes, they put different algorithms on top of this pretty old principle, but the foundation remains the same. The report doesn't mention search engines like Brainware's Globalbrain - a solution that does not rely on keywords at all. Brainware's Globalbrain (found by Redmond magazine to be superior to Google and Microsoft search offerings) differs from many other search products on the market in that it does not make use of keyword search. Rather, its searches are natural language based, using a patented n-gram approach. When indexing a word, the word is parsed into three parts and then a vector is created. For example, the word sample would be parsed as sam, amp, mpl, etc. This three-letter snippet approach makes the search engine language independent lets users search, not simply on key words, but on whole paragraphs. If you paste a whole multi-page document (say, a legal brief) into FAST's or Google's search window, the systems will freeze on you. But Globalbrain will instantly line up the closest matches. That's why a relatively young company already has such customers as Kaiser Permanente, KPMG, IRS, Singapore Police Force and others.
Posted by: Yegor Kuznetsov 25 Nov 2008