Enterprise Search Sourcebook 2008

COMMENTARY Why ENTERPRISE SEARCH Will Never Be Google-y BY CHRIS SHERMAN or better or worse, Google has taught most internet users how to search. And for these people, search is a kissing cousin of playing the slots in Vegas: Punch in a few keywords, pull the lever, and pray for a jackpot. Even when there’s not a huge payout, most people have been conditioned to accept what economist Herb Simon calls “satisficing” results (somewhere along the spectrum between satisfying and sufficient). With Google’s recent introduction of “universal search” in which book, news, image, and video results are now interspersed with webpage results, I suspect most people will become even more complacent and tolerant of “OK” results when searching the web. Enterprise searchers, by contrast, are a far more demanding mob. They don’t want “good enough” results, let alone a link to the latest home video from the organization’s new marketing intern. Rather, they want facts, figures, and other data, and furthermore, that data had better be accurate, up-to-date, and, in many cases, secure f and accessible only to those who have a need to know. In short, enterprise search needs to be industrial strength, appealing to and satisfying an entirely different set of information needs than what most web searchers require. That isn’t to say that Google isn’t up to the task of enterprise search. It clearly is. The company offers several enterprise search products and services, and boasts an impressive list of customers for these. But tellingly, despite its impressive dominance in web-search market share, Google’s enterprise offerings lag in marketplace acceptance behind market leaders Verity, Autonomy, and FAST. Enterprise search is a tiny part of Google’s overall business mix, where it’s at the heart of the Big Three enterprise search vendors. Search of a Different Feather Enterprise search and web search are fundamentally different animals, and I’d argue that enterprise search won’t—and shouldn’t—be Google-y any time soon. The 12 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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