Findings of the report include: IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft continue to struggle to rationalize multiple search technologies and strategies. Oracle's "Secure Enterprise Search 10g" product may be the most straightforward offering of the three, but it has not yet seen extensive customer testing; Smaller search vendors continue to exploit Microsoft's inability to develop effective search solutions atop SharePoint. Mondosoft, Coveo, dtSearch, and others are likely to continue offering value-added capabilities after the release of Microsoft's new search services in SharePoint 2007; Google's search appliance has disrupted the market, but customer testing still often finds the appliance lacking in "tune-ability" and integration capabilities; and Faceted or "guided" navigation capabilities originally associated with enterprise search vendor Endeca have gone from product differentiator to widespread feature. Customers can obtain faceted navigation capabilities from several search vendors. Now, the key differentiator is the extent to which a search system can successfully auto-generate a useful set of metadata "facets" with minimal customer intervention. The 3rd edition of the Enterprise Search Report features analysis and surveys of more than 30 products across 28 search vendors. The report is available for purchase online from CMS Watch. (www.cmswatch.com) |
