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Innovations in search or just vendor hype?
By Phil Muncaster
So another week another enterprise search announcement. This time Exalead, one of the mid-tier vendors sharing the space with Vivissimo, Sinequa and others, has launched a new product line - CloudView. The problem I'm discovering digging deeper and deeper into this area, is that every single vendor is claiming to have a differentiator, a unique selling point and the best search engine in the world ... ever. Unfortunately, speak to the analyst community and they'll probably tell you that the enterprise search market is seriously crowded, and that most of the options you'll have out there pretty much boil down to not that much differentiation at all.
CloudView promises an OEM edition, a Search Edition and a 360 Edition all built on a service oriented architecture platform. Part of the message UK managing director Raymond Bentinck is trying to push out is of Exalead technology giving improved usability and relevancy. The other is being able to search structured and unstructured information in the enterprise and beyond, and complete the loop if you like, by going further than BI tools can by telling you not just the what but the why.
According to Ovum's Mike Davis, the only way to really differentiate in this space is by concentrating on a specific sector, and serving the needs of those customers. Which is very much what Recommind does, with the legal market pretty much in its back pocket. If search is being commoditised to this extent, it's probably not a bad thing for the IT buyer, or the information professionals who have to use the products - competition usually benefits the customer eventually. Search is fast becoming, as Davis says, the new portal - the place where you want to go to find all your information in a single view, and the vendors that can provide this in a most comprehensive and user friendly way as possible will triumph.
Enterprise Search vendors that provide a comprehensive and user friendly service will triumph, but only if the users find it useful and the quality of search results is high. If the search engine doesn't return the results users want, then what's the point?
There are many ways for Enterprise Search vendors to differentiate themselves from other providers, many names and marketing concepts appear, but if those unique selling points don't benefit the user then they're simply unnecessary distractions adding to customer confusion. Sinequa believes that Enterprise Search providers should differentiate themselves in ways that will have a genuine impact on the user experience, such as the relevancy of answers provided to users and the ease of deployment.
As the Enterprise Search market heats up with more companies looking to expand their search solutions, vendors must prove their worth by providing the capacity to connect out of the box to many sources and the ability to manage all access right policies, as well as security management out of the box. To give a great user experience vendors must be able to do this, if they can not then they will find that their users are left feeling unsatisfied.
Posted by :Jean Ferre | October 13, 2008 11:35 AM