Enterprise Search Sourcebook 2008

COMMENTARY Search Is Dead— Now What? BY STEPHEN ARNOLD illions of queries are launched each day—to Google, Yahoo!, third-party systems operating behind an organization’s firewall, desktop search systems available from Coveo, Exalead, IBM, ISYS, Siderean, and maybe fourscore other firms. There’s also open source software from Lucene … well, the list goes on and on. Entrepreneurs suck hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capital firms to fuel new search competitors. Some are branded with names intended to evoke search and that suggest notions of wisdom (Thetus), or trigger a sense of furious activity (Attensity); others’ branding is merely puzzling (Kanisa, Powerset). Autonomy, Endeca, and Fast Search & Transfer are purpose-built to tame the enterprise information flood. Making counter-arguments that dismiss these are the “big three”: IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, which offer equally comprehensive systems topped off with workflow, analytics, visualization, and enough programming options to delight the most jaded CIO. Standing there like Harvey the invisible rabbit is Google. Although others in the enterprise search market dismiss Google as a floppy parvenu, claiming its approach to enterprise search is too simplistic for enterprise duty, Google continues to make sales and—by sheer gravitational pull—to alter the landscape of enterprise search. Google is poised to bypass search and jump to data spaces and new approaches to relevance such as certainty scores. With the growing need for tools to manage information floods, how can search be dead? There are some reasons that are not always addressed in a straightforward way by vendors and pundits. For example, consider the following: • Most users of enterprise search systems are dissatisfied with laundry lists of results. The answer is probably in the list, but the employees lack the time or patience to open and inspect the documents in it. b • Financial officers are dismayed at the direct and indirect costs enterprise search engines generate. • Most organizations have multiple enterprise search systems. Fortune 500 companies are the worst offenders, usually operating five or more systems. • Most search vendors promise anything to get the sale, then trust that their engineers can deliver the goods. • Keyword search is often a turnoff. Users say that hitting on the right combination of keywords to get the information is too difficult. • As many as two-thirds of enterprise search system users report that other means must be used to find needed information. These facts were unearthed in the research for the first three editions of The Enterprise Search Report, which I wrote from 2003 to 2006, and for my forthcoming monograph Beyond Search: What to Do When Your Search System Doesn’t Work (Gilbane Group, Spring 2008). Other analysts, from the Butler Group to Ovum in the U.K., have also identified similar issues. Navigating Search Search is dead in the sense that keyword search does not deliver the simplicity, results, and cost savings that licensees and users demand. What’s next? Systems have to move beyond search. The technologies needed to improve findability, getting an answer, or locating a specific document are cutting-edge and have only become possible in the last few years. We’re entering treacherous waters now. Established system vendors and newcomers promise silver bullets that will kill the werewolves plaguing enterprise search. Taxonomies resonate in some vendors’ marketing spiels. Others focus on natural language processing. Some stress intelligent systems that discover the meaning of documents 20 ENTERPRISE SEARCH SOURCEBOOK 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Enterprise Search Sourcebook 2008

Enterprise Search Sourcebook 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Publisher’s Note Findings and Figures Why Enterprise Search Will Never Be Google-y Searching for Search Usability Your Users Are Talking to You What’s Your Search Story? Search Is Dead—Now What? Delivering on the Promise of Enterprise Search Taming Multiple Search Engines in Your Organization Enterprise Search: Trends for 2008 Enterprise Search Seen From the Inside Open Source Search: Elixir or Poison? Avoiding the Big Mistakes in Search Semantic Search Takes Root in the Enterprise E-Discovery Essentials: The Rules You Need to Know SharePoint Search: An Enterprise Contender? Integrating Security Into Your Enterprise Search Infrastructure Engineering a Better Search Infrastructure Letting End Users Ask the Questions, Stat! The Power of Knowledge Legal Research Using Enterprise Search: A Developer’s View From Treading Water to Full Steam Ahead Pulling Out All the Stops With Midas A Natural Search Solution An Incremental Approach to Improving Enterprise Search The Enterprise Search Sourcebook Showcase Directory Index to Advertisers and Companies Mentioned

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