Enterprise Search Sourcebook 2008

COMMENTARY taming MULTIPLE SEARCH ENGINES IN YOUR ORGANIZATION BY JEAN BEDORD O ne-size-fits-all enterprise search is dead—if it ever existed. At the same time, search that makes an organization’s assets more readily accessible has become a critical mission. Customers, partners, and employees all expect to be able to “find answers” via search technologies. Thus, organizations increasingly deploy search engines to help satisfy these expectations. These engines are typically called site search, department search, intranet search, or application search, rather than enterprise search. However, the fact is that organizations that have one search application usually have several. A 2007 enterprise search survey I did for the publisher of the Enterprise Search Sourcebook, Information Today, Inc., and my employer, Shore Communications, found that 62% of respondents had more than one search solution in place. Noted industry analyst Steve Arnold reports that the typical Fortune 500 company uses solutions by at least five search vendors. This proliferation (and multiplicity) may not be obvious, even to those within the companies deploying the solutions, since responsibility for search strategy is frequently undefined within the organization. One reason for this is because search doesn’t exist independent of the content that is being accessed. It creeps in with add-ons to content management systems (CMSs), business intelligence (BI) applications, records management,document management, or knowledge management systems. In addition, ecommerce systems with baked-in search capabilities can add to the growing number of search vendors used by an organization.As an independent application, search can be tuned to specific business-process needs, which means it comes in many guises. Thus, many companies face more than the already challenging issue of managing a single search engine: As the number of solutions deployed within an organization increases, distinct issues emerge in reconciling these disparate solutions. The major problem is that each search product builds indexes to the existing content using a “secret sauce” that’s incompatible with other vendor indexes. Thus, finding answers across different application repositories, each with its own index, is not a straightforward proposition. Strategic Planning for Search One enterprise search myth is that all information in the organization should be accessible via search. Organizational content, however, is more difficult than the relatively simple world of consumer search on 24 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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