Open Source Search Myth 3: Skills Required In-House

This is part of a series addressing the misconception that open source search is too risky for companies to use. You can find the introduction to the series here; this is Part 3 of the series; for Part 2 click Potentially Expensive Customizations.

Part 3: Skills Required In-House

One of the hallmarks of enterprise software in general is that it is complex. People in large organizations who manage instances of enterprise search as no less likely than their non-technical peers to believe that "if Google can make search so good on the internet, enterprise search must be trivial". Sadly, that is the killer myth of search.

Google on the internet - or Bing or Baidu or whichever site you use and love - is good because of the supporting technology, NOT simply because of search. I'd wager that most of what people like about Google et al has very little to do with search and a great deal to do constant monitoring and tweaking of the platform.

Consider: at the Google 'command line' (the search box), you can type in an arithmetic equation such as "2+3" get 5. You can enter a FedEx tracking number and get a suggestion to link to FedEx for information. It's cool that Google provides those capabilities and others; but those features are there because Google has programs looking at search behavior for all of its users every day in order to understand user intent. When something unusual comes up, humans get involved and make judgments. When it makes sense, Google implements another capability - in front of the search engine, not within it.

Enterprise search is the same - except that very few companies invest money in managing and running their search; so no matter how well you tune it at the beginning, quality deteriorates over time. Enterprise search is not 'fire and forget'.

 Any company that rolls out a mission critical application and does NOT have their own skilled team in house is going to pay a consulting form thousands of dollars a day forever. 'Nuff said.