Gartner is changing Enterprise Search from the Magic Quadrant to Market Scope. Inclusion of this in the Magic Quadrant and moving it to Market Scope itself is a testimony that an organization or an enterprise if, had not already included search as a business strategy or productivity tool, needs to make it available for its knowledge workers.
Enterprise Search can augment people, business and knowledge areas coupled with actionable items that directly impact profitability, business productivity and information awareness. With Microsoft’s acquisition of FAST, Google in a box Plug/Play Search Appliance, Lucene/Solr and many other vendors offering tools, this space has become a cynosure in the current day. Needless to say, the heterogeneous data in an Enterprise makes it even more compelling to have the capabilities to search for the needle in the haystack.
Knowledge worker is spending 9.5 hours a week searching using various tools and interfaces. Companies that are poised to leverage Search in their Enterprise are bound to experience newer horizons not only in terms of productivity but knowledge worker’s satisfaction and an Enterprises overall information awareness level by consolidating widely scattered data silos existing in structured, semi-structured and un-structured formats.
This blog discusses and evaluates the current and future of Search and its associated developments that have made a compelling reason for organizations to adopt instead of losing out to competitors. The objective is to look in a holistic and pragmatic manner that can set the stage for key decision makers in understanding the significance of Search as a valuable and strategic tool for an Enterprise and the future it has to offer.
Search has penetrated into our day to day applications not limited to desktops, internet, intranet and email. It also includes many Integrated Development Environment tools. With such a proliferation of Search, Enterprise Search has also taken a different dimension all together as this encompasses not just productivity, but revenue models in some cases where Enterprises are working with various Customers and Partners who can actively access organizations Enterprise Search Platform.
Why Enterprise Search. Let’s take a real time example of the following error code (-81024) which resulted when a trial version of a HP product was tried using a Windows 7 client machine. An Internet search revealed that there was no clue even from HP other than the fact that it is a compatibility issue. The knowledge base from HP could have been a little outdated or could have been lurking in a data silo making it difficult to find the needle in the haystack.
1) A pre-defined business value should be the most important step in identifying the need to have an Enterprise Search Platform in a given organization. Example: A smart phone for a sales person Versus ESP for Support Professional
2) Information that is available in silos namely individual desktops, emails, Intranet Portals, RDBMS, CMS is not projected via a single interface and employees need to run from pillar to post or get help from outside or re-invent the already existing information thereby duplicating efforts
3) Knowledge and Action are tied up and the results of the Search needs some actionable items geared towards monetization or improvement of job productivity of an information worker within an Enterprise
4) Right information to the right people at the right time improving business productivity
5) Different relevancy models for different users in an Enterprise facilitating anticipated discovery
6) Provide Search outside of the firewall to customers in order to react quickly rather than waiting for a more expensive and time consuming ETL process and reports via BI tools
7) Push-Pull model where Search provides related info via push that was not explicitly sought for
More to follow in a sequel to this blog…
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