CMS Watch Exalead Feed

A New Wave of Enterprise Search?

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:40:00 -0400

At the AIIM Expo in Boston and Documation Paris earlier this month, I met with several enterprise search vendors, old and new. There's a growing movement afoot to de-throne the old guard; talk of replacing FAST and Autonomy seemed to be uttered by every vendor that wasn't a household name.

It started with Attivio, which is full of defectors from FAST, convinced they can do search better. "We're fixing everything that used to bug our customers," said Andrew McKay, SVP of products, speaking of his days at FAST. He spoke at length about statistical analysis, probability, and the company's focus on standard search with a business intelligence context -- talking with such speed, I wondered if he'd stop to breathe. A lot of the value proposition sounded Autonomy-esque. Their booth was smartly and strategically placed next to Google's, which no doubt got them foot traffic. There's already a lot of hub-bub about Attivio out there, but as of AIIM, they had only one customer thus far. We'll see how the hype measures up once the technology is out there for a while and customers can tell us how it really works.

In Paris, I admit my surprise at the number of local enterprise search vendors on display, including Antidot and Polyspot; proof that there's no shortage of local, eager-to-please vendors in just about every geography. Most have only been around for a few years. I chatted at length with François D'Haegeleer of Sinequa (founded in 2000), a company that's been picking up customers in Europe, and thus gains our watchful eye. Their heavy focus on linguistic analysis (with a quarter of their team consisting of linguistic researchers) seems to appeal to the language-loving French, and Sinequa's technology has already replaced Autonomy's at couple of major French press agencies, including Les Echos. The company also just opened an office in London, where fellow French search vendor Exalead established a footprint some time ago. Will the French triumph north of the channel, or will it be another Waterloo?

"Nous sommes la nouvelle vague d'Enterprise Search," D'Haegeleer said, and I stood amused by the metaphor, and also baffled by the choice of the terms the French choose to translate vs. not (other vendors said "moteurs de recherche d'entreprise"). Controlled vocabularies, anyone?

Characterized by self-conscious rejection of conservative paradigms and a spirit of youthful iconoclasm, the New Wave of French cinema took the world by storm, emphasizing the triumph of the individual. Will the individual searchers of enterprise information triumph from the new wave of enterprise search? Are these new products really more "lightweight" than the heavyweights of the search world? It's too early to tell, and we won't render judgment before hearing from customers who've worked with the technology for a time. Stay tuned, we'll keep you posted on these vendors and the others we cover as we update our Enterprise Search Report throughout the year.

To boldly go where they have gone before

bloem@radagio.com(Adriaan Bloem) — Fri, 7 Mar 2008 07:47:00 -0500

Web CMS vendor SDL Tridion has opened a new office in Germany, almost eight years to the date after their first attempt. Which prompts the question: why would it be so hard for a Dutch software vendor to do business with their immediate neighbors, especially because outside our narrow realm of content management, ties between the two countries are very close?

Tridion's new digs in "Internationale Stadt" Mülheim an der Ruhr may not present as fancy a location as say, the Amsterdam or New York offices, but at least it's in the heart of commercial Germany. Tridion has certainly come a long way since their first offering, "DialogServer," and since the company's second foray into the North America seems to have started off much more successfully than its first try, the time might be right to give Germany another go.

But after visiting conferences in both North America. and Europe, I find it odd to see that while the web certainly has a global reach, most content management products -- and many best practices -- clearly do not. The U.S. still thinks the World Series is, well, the World Series. To be sure, there's some cross-pollination among Northern European countries (the U.K., Scandinavia, and The Netherlands); I meet a lot of the people I see in that region across the Atlantic, as well. It's not uncommon to have Australians make the long trip to participate, and I certainly know there's no shortage of content management expertise in India.

But there are still some big divides. Are they governed primarily by the fact that English isn't the world-wide lingua franca we tend to think it is? My experience in the relative micro-cosmos of Europe certainly suggests this. The German-speaking regions, content technology customers and suppliers alike more or less stick to their boundaries, as do the French, Spanish and Italian communities. Occasionally, we find out about a vendor that has "quietly" been building a very capable product (such as Nuxeo or Exalead). And there's certainly evidence that customers in Italy and beyond are dealing with much the same problems as anyone else.

Of course, I'm aware that this represents my very Dutch point of view. But the CMS Watch Reports are read around the world, which is why I'd love to hear more about what everyone's up to -- mail me and set the record straight. Is there more than open source in Italy? Got an exciting enterprise search implementation going in Nairobi? Let me know!

In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see whether Tridion will manage to convince the world there's more than tulips and windmills to The Netherlands. Some concepts translate well, but it's time to put the theory to the test: is content management a transcultural process, and can a system bridge the divide?

Enterprise Search Vendor Landscape, Circa 2008

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli and Adriaan Bloem) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:16:00 -0500

You might be tempted to select enterprise search vendors for your shortlist based on their supposed "leadership" status in the market -- status either conferred by analyst firms or assumed by the vendors themselves. However, CMS Watch analyst Theresa Regli argues that you need to look more closely at product and vendor alike -- and understand where both are headed -- to properly evaluate your longterm risks and opportunities in an evolving marketplace...

Google Search Appliance: small step in technology, giant leap in marketing

bloem@radagio.com(Adriaan Bloem) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:51:00 -0500

With every vendor acquisition, and the uncertainty this brings for existing customers, I see self-perceived competitors step in with cut-rate offers to "upgrade" to their technology. But I was still surprised to see Google, in a rather bold move, try to lure some Microsoft and Fast Search & Transfer customers away after the recent announcement that the two would become one.

I remember in a panel discussion I was moderating at cmf2007, Exalead CEO François Bourdoncle mentioned the goal of his company was to create a solution "that allows for quick implementations," but of course, with a nod to his competitors, "we don't say fast." So when an enterprise search vendor does mention "fast," they really do mean "FAST." And when Google introduces the "make a fast switch to Google" program, they really mean to say "make a switch from FAST to Google." To be sure not to miss any opportunity, they offer the same for "customers with a collaboration/portal/cms system in place" which is a pretty good description of Microsoft's SharePoint.

So what would Google have to offer over FAST ESP? Well, of course "continued development of your solution" (the usual direct targeting of customers' main concerns after a merger or acquisition). "Why switch to Google?" the company asks rhetorically, replying that one of the Google Search Appliance advantages is that it "searches all your enterprise content" and "leverages all your existing access control and security mechanisms." As readers of the Enterprise Search Report will know, that's a bit of a stretch, certainly when compared head-to-head in the multi-repository enterprise search scenarios ESP usually competes for.

I hear a faint echo when Google addresses some of the main criticisms of SharePoint, asking "is your vendor's enterprise search strategy clear and sound?" and whether it would add "one more piece to the -already- complex puzzle?" Of course, MOSS Search is not a slam dunk, but compared to the effort it takes to connect an Appliance to SharePoint, I feel Google is hardly in the position to criticize.

Following the links on their website, it is interesting to see how Google's marketing builds upon its own house of cards of previous materials, whereas real progress of the technology has been relatively slow. Google's solutions certainly have their strengths, but you should carefully consider your scenarios before you commit to something that might be rather ill-equipped to deal with your needs. For more details, you can check for yourself in the free excerpt of our Report.