CMS Watch, a vendor-independent analyst firm that evaluates content technologies, has found that the software-as-a-services ("SaaS") model for enterprise search has faltered, as hosted players fail to make inroads into enterprise-wide scenarios and appliance vendors increasingly address the kind of simpler scenarios typically fulfilled by hosted services. CMS Watch finds at least three reasons for the decline of SaaS search: 1) SaaS offerings have been limited largely to website search scenarios. 2) The rise of search appliance vendors (especially Google) has cut into demand for simple, web-oriented solutions of the type offered by SaaS vendors. 3) Google's own hosted search offering, although targeted at the SMB market, has likely dampened enthusiasm among potential competitors.
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