“ENTERPRISE SEARCH”. For anyone in an IT related field this terms is all too familiar. Everywhere I look I find myself running into the term, although this may just be secondary to my profession. So why is the term been the hot topic of the last few years? Has the entire world’s economic basis somehow consolidated into a few large entities? With all this focus on the enterprise, what about the little guy?
Much of the fascination with this term has been generated by the media. Enterprises are sexy, and with Microsoft’s acquisition of FAST and the website giants they support, enterprise search solutions attract the glamour of a seemingly dull industry to outsiders. In addition, companies that target enterprises buy media attention like ants at a picnic, and I can’t disagree with the appeal of closing a multimillion dollar design deal with an enterprise client.
It is first important to understand that not all “Enterprises” should be considered such for this argument. Many companies with thousands of users or site visitors simply do not have the budget or IT department enormity to be considered “Enterprise”. Companies willing to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a search investment should be considered “Enterprise”, while those in the tens of thousands range should not.
For the few of you reading that work in the enterprise level, how much did your firm pay for their companywide search solution? If they haven’t implemented one, are there plans to do so, and what are the needs of your users? Have you hammered down a budget to fulfill them? Have you included the number of development hours you are willing to spare in your budget?
For most of us, we don’t need the infinite customization included in an enterprise search solution. In fact in many cases the development time that comes bundled can become a larger burden than the licensing itself. Just because your company has the ability to spend your lifetime wages on a solution does not mean they need to. It is important to evaluate your various options and decide if those few additional features are worth a few additional layoffs, or if the less expensive option without the “Enterprise” tag will meet the needs of your organization.
Most of us work in medium sized companies with moderate budgets. For companies in this group you are already long forgotten by the “enterprise” level providers. So what are your options when analyzing how to improve your company’s search solution? You are also given the options of buy, build or freeware. As you have learned by this point in your analysis, most buy solutions are out of your budget, yet your team is already stretched too thin to build. So do you settle for freeware the seldom works as expected? What happens when after weeks of testing you realize that wildcard solution doesn’t work for people search? How much money and man hours did that testing cost you? Are you happy with those barely configurable web parts that make you wish the job was outsourced?
For those of you with smaller budgets and equally overworked IT departments there are solutions available for you. Ontolica Search for MOSS and Ontolica Wildcard for MOSS from SurfRay were designed with the medium sized company in mind. The solution is quick to deploy and can be easily customized through a GUI which walks the admin through changes step by step. What takes an hour of coding in OOTB MOSS takes a minute in Ontolica. By utilizing the MOSS index and requiring no additional hardware, the price is kept far less than Enterprise targeted search solutions. How much could your company save by implementing Ontolica as your search solution?