Enterprise Search Technology Evaluation Report
Introduction
As organizations address the requirements of faster and better decision making, they need enterprise search and retrieval (ESR) solutions, and tools that can deal with the rapidly increasing volumes of available information both within, and around the enterprise. Such solutions need to address the multiple issues of usability, integration and security, scalability and performance needs.
Features and benefits
There are a few large vendors, a myriad of small and emerging vendors, and now well-established, and credible open source software (OSS) alternatives. An increasing level of embedded ESR functionality being found within applications, particularly those from the larger vendors or via OEM.
There are now a number of mature OSS products, and most importantly a range of integrators to deploy and support them. Their functionality is sufficient for most organizational needs, and there is a wide range of interfaces and tools available to support integration into existing IT environments.
Some commentators believe that the market for ESR solutions and the number of ‘significant’ solutions have both reduced to the point where analyses such as this report are no longer relevant. Ovum completely disagrees demand for ESR solutions, as this reprt shows has arguably never been higher.
Your key questions answered
As organizations address the requirements of faster and better decision making, they need enterprise search and retrieval (ESR) solutions, and tools that can deal with the rapidly increasing volumes of available information both within, and around the enterprise. Such solutions need to address the multiple issues of usability, integration and security, scalability and performance needs.
Features and benefits
- This report provides strategy for the CIO, analysis of the technologies for the CTO and objective comparisons for selection.
- Comprehensive features matrix and functional analysis of 12 of the most important products in the market
- Discussion and analysis of the importance federation, the convergence with BI technologies and the impact of social media.
There are a few large vendors, a myriad of small and emerging vendors, and now well-established, and credible open source software (OSS) alternatives. An increasing level of embedded ESR functionality being found within applications, particularly those from the larger vendors or via OEM.
There are now a number of mature OSS products, and most importantly a range of integrators to deploy and support them. Their functionality is sufficient for most organizational needs, and there is a wide range of interfaces and tools available to support integration into existing IT environments.
Some commentators believe that the market for ESR solutions and the number of ‘significant’ solutions have both reduced to the point where analyses such as this report are no longer relevant. Ovum completely disagrees demand for ESR solutions, as this reprt shows has arguably never been higher.
Your key questions answered
- Open source is a viable/reliable/demonstrable alternative to proprietary solutions, but there may be additional services costs.
- No one solution will meet all of an organization’s ESR requirements, domain focussed solutions give benefits.
- Organizations need to follow a structured project management methodology to get the best value from ESR solutions.
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
1.1 Management summary
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Business issues
Technology issues
Market issues
The Enterprise Search and Retrieval extended Decision Matrix
1.2 Report objectives and structure
Chapter 2 – Fundamentals of Enterprise Search and Retrieval
Chapter 3 – Federated search: finding needles within haystacks
Chapter 4 - Enterprise search and retrieval (ESR) meets business intelligence (BI)
Chapter 5 – Using social search and analytics to improve business outcomes
Chapter 6 – Market perspectives and vendor comparisons
Chapter 7 – Technology audits
Chapter 8 – Vendor profiles
Chapter 9 – Glossary
Chapter 10 – Appendix
FUNDAMENTALS OF ENTERPRISE SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL
2.1 Summary
Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages
2.2 Business impact
Business issues
Organization issues
Technology issues
2.3 Selection criteria
Search and query capabilities
Visualization and navigation capabilities
Data sources supported and indexing capabilities
Administration and management
Security
Maturity
Scalability
Interoperability
Innovation
Enterprise fit
2.4 Solution maturity
Consolidation plus innovation
Open source the ‘elephant in the room’ for ESR
SaaS is ready and waiting
The appliance is getting sophisticated
The Ovum view
2.5 Deployment and management considerations
There will always be more content to index
What content does the organization want to index?
Performance
Security in hybrid deployments
Search can always be improved
Domain expertise is essential for successful deployment
Common barriers and pitfalls
2.6 Recommendations
Recommendations for enterprises
Recommendations for vendors
FEDERATED SEARCH: FINDING NEEDLES WITHIN HAYSTACKS
3.1 Summary
Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages
3.2 Improving the accessibility and retrieval of corporate information
Employee search expectations are influenced by familiar Internet technologies
Business information resides in heterogeneous systems and repositories
Users want a single interface to web, intranet, and other information resources
3.3 Extending the range, reach, and quality of enterprise search
To be truly enterprise-wide, search needs to be federated
Federated search enables simplified access to content from legacy systems
Relevancy, quality, and timeliness of search results are improved with federated search
3.4 Developing a federated search strategy for the enterprise
Deploying federated search within the enterprise presents a range of challenges
The primary delivery points for federated search are the desktop, mobile, and portal
Selecting a federated search solution requires considered evaluation
3.5 Recommendations
Recommendations for enterprises
Recommendations for vendors
ENTERPRISE SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL MEETS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
4.1 Summary
Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages
4.2 Opportunity knocks for enterprise search and business intelligence innovation
The confluence of BI and ESR solutions will help organizations address information management challenges
Next-generation BI solutions need to look beyond structured data
ESR can help navigate through structured data and semi-structured information
4.3 Unified information management requires the amalgimation of BI and ESR technologies
The cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques between BI and ESR domains is nurturing innovation
BI vendors will try to acquire their way into the ESR market
Integration between BI and ESR will help plug the enterprise information management gaps
4.4 BI and ESR: tools and technologies to ride out the recession
ESR could spread the benefits of BI throughout the organization
Different approaches to amalgamating ESR and BI
4.5 Recommendations
Recommendations for enterprises
Recommendations for vendors
USING SOCIAL SEARCH AND ANALYTICS TO IMPROVE BUSINESS OUTCOMES
5.1 Summary
Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages
5.2 Extracting social capital from business networks
The corporate email system is still the primary source for business social networking insights
Social discovery uncovers the business relationships that matter the most
Realtime social search can add value and insight to decision support systems
5.3 Listening and reacting to social networks
The corporate marketing function is struggling to make sense of online conversations
Organizations can gain significant insight and market intelligence by ‘listening’ to the social web
Search-based social networking tools connect companies to their employees, customers, and partners
5.4 Using search to determine what is truly important
Search, analysis, and filtering tools for business social networking environments are still in their infancy
Enterprise search and social analytics provide business users with an actionable view of corporate information
Complex organizations will be the early beneficiaries of social analytics
5.5 Recommendations
Recommendations for enterprises
Recommendations for vendors
MARKET PERSPECTIVES AND VENDOR COMPARISONS
6.1 Summary
Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages
6.2 Enterprise search and retrieval Features Matrix
Features Matrix methdology
Features Matrix
6.3 Enterprise search and retrieval extended Decision Matrix
Catalyst
Summary
Market developments
The ESR market is growing at a rapid pace
The ESR extended and core decision matrices
The ESR core decision matrix
Market leaders
Summary scores
Methodology
Extended methodology
Further reading
6.4 Enterprise search and retrieval vendor analysis
Autonomy: ESR radars
Endeca: ESR radars
Google: ESR radars
IBM: ESR radars
Microsoft: ESR radars
Oracle: ESR radars
Recommind: ESR radars
Sinequa: ESR radars
Extended vendor/developer analysis
TECHNOLOGY AUDITS
7.1 Apache Software Foundation – Solr 1.4
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.2 Autonomy – IDOL
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.3 Endeca Technologies – Information Access Platform 6.1
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.4 Exalead – Exalead CloudView
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
7.5 Funnelback/Squiz – Funnelback Web and Enterprise Search Version
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.6 Google – Google Search Appliance 6.0
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
7.7 IBM – OmniFind Enterprise Edition 9.1
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.8 Microsoft – FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.9 Oracle – Secure Enterprise Search 11g
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.10 Recommind – Decisiv Search 6.0
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.11 Sinequa – Sinequa Enterprise Search 7.1
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.12 Vivisimo, Inc. – Velocity Platform 7.5
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
VENDOR PROFILES
Active Navigation
Company profile
Brainware
Company profile
Clearwell
Company profile
Coveo
Company profile
Dieselpoint
Company profile
Expert System
Company profile
Fabasoft
Company profile
Flax
Company profile
ISYS
Company profile
Lucid Imagination
Company profile
MarkLogic Corporation
Company profile
Search Technologies
Company profile
Simplexo
Company profile
StoredIQ
Company profile
Trampoline Systems
Company profile
UltraKnowledge
Company profile
WolframAlpha
Company profile
X1
Company profile
GLOSSARY
Glossary
ACL (access control list)
API (application programming interface)
Archive data
ASP (application service provider)
Audit trail
BPM (business process management)
CAS (content addressed storage)
CEO
CFO
CIFS (common internet file system)
COM (component object model)
Compliance
Corporate portal
Crawling
CRM (customer relationship management)
DB2
DHTML (dynamic HTML)
DPA
DRM (digital rights management)
DTI (former)
ECM (enterprise content management)
EDM (electronic document management )
EDRM (electronic document and records management)
Eduction
e-GMS (e-government metadata standard)
ERM (electronic records management)
ERP (enterprise resource planning)
ESR (enterprise search and retrieval)
ETL (extract, transform and load)
Extranet
Fileplan
FTP (file transfer protocol)
FTS (full text search)
Garbling
Groupware
GUI (graphical user interface)
HTML (hypertext markup language)
HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol)
HTTPS (hypertext transfer protocol over secure sockets layer)
ICE (information and content exchange)
Intranet
ISP (internet service provider)
Java EE - Java Platform Enterprise Edition
JDBC (Java database connectivity)
LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol)
Lemmatisation
MDM (master data management)
Metadata
Middleware
.NET
ODBC (open database connectivity)
Ontology
Parsing
PDF (portable document format)
Personalisation
Phonetics
Phrasing
PKI (public key infrastructure)
Portal
Pure-play
RDF (resource description framework)
Relational database
Repository
REST (representational state transfer)
ROI (return on investment)
RTF (rich text format)
SaaS (software as a service)
SAML (security assertion markup language)
SCM (supply chain management)
SDK (software developers kit)
Semantics
SGML (standard generalised markup language)
SME (small to medium-sized enterprise)
SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol)
SOAP (simple object access protocol)
Spider
SQL (structured query language)
SSL (secure sockets layer)
SSO (single sign-on)
Synonyms
Taxonomy
TCO (total cost of ownership)
TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/internet protocol )
Telco
Tokenisation
Trigram
UDDI (universal discovery, description, and integration)
UIMA (unstructuctured information management architecture)
UNICODE
URL (uniform resource locator)
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
WAIS (Wide-area information system)
WCM (web content management)
Web crawler
WebDAV (World Wide Web distributed authoring and versioning, or web-based distribution authoring and versioning)
Web services
Workflow
WSDL (web services description language)
XML (extensible markup language)
APPENDIX
Further reading
Methodology
Author(s)
Ovum consulting
Disclaimer
1.1 Management summary
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Business issues
Technology issues
Market issues
The Enterprise Search and Retrieval extended Decision Matrix
1.2 Report objectives and structure
Chapter 2 – Fundamentals of Enterprise Search and Retrieval
Chapter 3 – Federated search: finding needles within haystacks
Chapter 4 - Enterprise search and retrieval (ESR) meets business intelligence (BI)
Chapter 5 – Using social search and analytics to improve business outcomes
Chapter 6 – Market perspectives and vendor comparisons
Chapter 7 – Technology audits
Chapter 8 – Vendor profiles
Chapter 9 – Glossary
Chapter 10 – Appendix
FUNDAMENTALS OF ENTERPRISE SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL
2.1 Summary
Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages
2.2 Business impact
Business issues
Organization issues
Technology issues
2.3 Selection criteria
Search and query capabilities
Visualization and navigation capabilities
Data sources supported and indexing capabilities
Administration and management
Security
Maturity
Scalability
Interoperability
Innovation
Enterprise fit
2.4 Solution maturity
Consolidation plus innovation
Open source the ‘elephant in the room’ for ESR
SaaS is ready and waiting
The appliance is getting sophisticated
The Ovum view
2.5 Deployment and management considerations
There will always be more content to index
What content does the organization want to index?
Performance
Security in hybrid deployments
Search can always be improved
Domain expertise is essential for successful deployment
Common barriers and pitfalls
2.6 Recommendations
Recommendations for enterprises
Recommendations for vendors
FEDERATED SEARCH: FINDING NEEDLES WITHIN HAYSTACKS
3.1 Summary
Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages
3.2 Improving the accessibility and retrieval of corporate information
Employee search expectations are influenced by familiar Internet technologies
Business information resides in heterogeneous systems and repositories
Users want a single interface to web, intranet, and other information resources
3.3 Extending the range, reach, and quality of enterprise search
To be truly enterprise-wide, search needs to be federated
Federated search enables simplified access to content from legacy systems
Relevancy, quality, and timeliness of search results are improved with federated search
3.4 Developing a federated search strategy for the enterprise
Deploying federated search within the enterprise presents a range of challenges
The primary delivery points for federated search are the desktop, mobile, and portal
Selecting a federated search solution requires considered evaluation
3.5 Recommendations
Recommendations for enterprises
Recommendations for vendors
ENTERPRISE SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL MEETS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
4.1 Summary
Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages
4.2 Opportunity knocks for enterprise search and business intelligence innovation
The confluence of BI and ESR solutions will help organizations address information management challenges
Next-generation BI solutions need to look beyond structured data
ESR can help navigate through structured data and semi-structured information
4.3 Unified information management requires the amalgimation of BI and ESR technologies
The cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques between BI and ESR domains is nurturing innovation
BI vendors will try to acquire their way into the ESR market
Integration between BI and ESR will help plug the enterprise information management gaps
4.4 BI and ESR: tools and technologies to ride out the recession
ESR could spread the benefits of BI throughout the organization
Different approaches to amalgamating ESR and BI
4.5 Recommendations
Recommendations for enterprises
Recommendations for vendors
USING SOCIAL SEARCH AND ANALYTICS TO IMPROVE BUSINESS OUTCOMES
5.1 Summary
Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages
5.2 Extracting social capital from business networks
The corporate email system is still the primary source for business social networking insights
Social discovery uncovers the business relationships that matter the most
Realtime social search can add value and insight to decision support systems
5.3 Listening and reacting to social networks
The corporate marketing function is struggling to make sense of online conversations
Organizations can gain significant insight and market intelligence by ‘listening’ to the social web
Search-based social networking tools connect companies to their employees, customers, and partners
5.4 Using search to determine what is truly important
Search, analysis, and filtering tools for business social networking environments are still in their infancy
Enterprise search and social analytics provide business users with an actionable view of corporate information
Complex organizations will be the early beneficiaries of social analytics
5.5 Recommendations
Recommendations for enterprises
Recommendations for vendors
MARKET PERSPECTIVES AND VENDOR COMPARISONS
6.1 Summary
Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages
6.2 Enterprise search and retrieval Features Matrix
Features Matrix methdology
Features Matrix
6.3 Enterprise search and retrieval extended Decision Matrix
Catalyst
Summary
Market developments
The ESR market is growing at a rapid pace
The ESR extended and core decision matrices
The ESR core decision matrix
Market leaders
Summary scores
Methodology
Extended methodology
Further reading
6.4 Enterprise search and retrieval vendor analysis
Autonomy: ESR radars
Endeca: ESR radars
Google: ESR radars
IBM: ESR radars
Microsoft: ESR radars
Oracle: ESR radars
Recommind: ESR radars
Sinequa: ESR radars
Extended vendor/developer analysis
TECHNOLOGY AUDITS
7.1 Apache Software Foundation – Solr 1.4
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.2 Autonomy – IDOL
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.3 Endeca Technologies – Information Access Platform 6.1
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.4 Exalead – Exalead CloudView
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
7.5 Funnelback/Squiz – Funnelback Web and Enterprise Search Version
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.6 Google – Google Search Appliance 6.0
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
7.7 IBM – OmniFind Enterprise Edition 9.1
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.8 Microsoft – FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.9 Oracle – Secure Enterprise Search 11g
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.10 Recommind – Decisiv Search 6.0
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.11 Sinequa – Sinequa Enterprise Search 7.1
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
7.12 Vivisimo, Inc. – Velocity Platform 7.5
Catalyst
Key findings
Ovum view
Recommendations
Solution overview
Solution analysis
Product strategy
Implementation
Deployment examples
VENDOR PROFILES
Active Navigation
Company profile
Brainware
Company profile
Clearwell
Company profile
Coveo
Company profile
Dieselpoint
Company profile
Expert System
Company profile
Fabasoft
Company profile
Flax
Company profile
ISYS
Company profile
Lucid Imagination
Company profile
MarkLogic Corporation
Company profile
Search Technologies
Company profile
Simplexo
Company profile
StoredIQ
Company profile
Trampoline Systems
Company profile
UltraKnowledge
Company profile
WolframAlpha
Company profile
X1
Company profile
GLOSSARY
Glossary
ACL (access control list)
API (application programming interface)
Archive data
ASP (application service provider)
Audit trail
BPM (business process management)
CAS (content addressed storage)
CEO
CFO
CIFS (common internet file system)
COM (component object model)
Compliance
Corporate portal
Crawling
CRM (customer relationship management)
DB2
DHTML (dynamic HTML)
DPA
DRM (digital rights management)
DTI (former)
ECM (enterprise content management)
EDM (electronic document management )
EDRM (electronic document and records management)
Eduction
e-GMS (e-government metadata standard)
ERM (electronic records management)
ERP (enterprise resource planning)
ESR (enterprise search and retrieval)
ETL (extract, transform and load)
Extranet
Fileplan
FTP (file transfer protocol)
FTS (full text search)
Garbling
Groupware
GUI (graphical user interface)
HTML (hypertext markup language)
HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol)
HTTPS (hypertext transfer protocol over secure sockets layer)
ICE (information and content exchange)
Intranet
ISP (internet service provider)
Java EE - Java Platform Enterprise Edition
JDBC (Java database connectivity)
LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol)
Lemmatisation
MDM (master data management)
Metadata
Middleware
.NET
ODBC (open database connectivity)
Ontology
Parsing
PDF (portable document format)
Personalisation
Phonetics
Phrasing
PKI (public key infrastructure)
Portal
Pure-play
RDF (resource description framework)
Relational database
Repository
REST (representational state transfer)
ROI (return on investment)
RTF (rich text format)
SaaS (software as a service)
SAML (security assertion markup language)
SCM (supply chain management)
SDK (software developers kit)
Semantics
SGML (standard generalised markup language)
SME (small to medium-sized enterprise)
SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol)
SOAP (simple object access protocol)
Spider
SQL (structured query language)
SSL (secure sockets layer)
SSO (single sign-on)
Synonyms
Taxonomy
TCO (total cost of ownership)
TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/internet protocol )
Telco
Tokenisation
Trigram
UDDI (universal discovery, description, and integration)
UIMA (unstructuctured information management architecture)
UNICODE
URL (uniform resource locator)
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
WAIS (Wide-area information system)
WCM (web content management)
Web crawler
WebDAV (World Wide Web distributed authoring and versioning, or web-based distribution authoring and versioning)
Web services
Workflow
WSDL (web services description language)
XML (extensible markup language)
APPENDIX
Further reading
Methodology
Author(s)
Ovum consulting
Disclaimer
