Deep Web proposes federation resource site

Sol Ledeman of Deep Web Technologies wants to create a one-stop demo center for federation technology and has invited all of the major vendors to participate.

Federated search is becoming increasingly popular as more corporate customers are looking for ways to delivery results from multiple enterprise search installations, often from many different vendors. Sometimes the issue is technical, sometimes political, but nearly all companies have three or more search vendor technologies running somewhere behind the firewall.

The one thing we'd like to have seen in Sol's challenge is security, since that's what we think separates the winners from the also-rans in federation. It's not always easy, but it is 'real world' in companies. Nonetheless, a demo site where users can compare vendor solutions 'apples to apples' on the same data sources would be nice.

By the way, we've seen some confusion among our customers and prospects on the subject, so we've taken a shot at defining 'federated search' in our Enterprise Search newsletter. We hope that helps some.

Comments

[Sol Lederman]

Thanks very much for supporting my efforts.

I'd like to make a couple of important clarifications, though.

1. The title of your post will lead people to believe that Deep Web Technologies is behind the federation resource site. That is not the case. The site is intended to be a vendor neutral site, overseen by myself as the owner of the Federated Search Blog.

1. While the blog is sponsored by Deep Web Technologies, its intent is to be vendor neutral and to bring visibility to what all vendors are doing. So, when you say "Sol Lederman of Deep Web Technologies ..." you may lead people to believe that this is a Deep Web Technologies blog. Its scope is much more broad in coverage of the industry than just supporting its sponsor.