Enterprise Search

Poor data quality gives search a bad rap

If you’re involved in managing the enterprise search instance at your company, there’s a good chance that you’ve experienced at least some users complain about the poor results they see. 

The common lament search teams hear is “Why didn’t we use Google?” when in fact, sites that implemented the GSA but don’t utilize the Google logo and look, we’ve seen the same complaints.

We're often asked to come in and recommend a solution. Sometimes the problem is simply using the wrong search platform: not every platform handles every user case and requirement equally well. Occasionally, the problem is a poorly or misconfigured search, or simply an instance that hasn’t been managed properly. Even the renowned Google public search engine doesn’t happen by itself, but even that is a poor example: in recent years, the Google search has become less of a search platform and more of a big data analytics engine.

Over the years, we’ve been helping clients select, implement, and manage Intranet search. In my opinion, the problem with search is elsewhere: Poor data quality. 

Enterprise data isn’t created with search in mind. There is little incentive for content authors to attach quality metadata in the properties fields of Adobe PDF Maker, Microsoft Office, and other document publishing tools. To make matters worse, there may be several versions of a given document as it goes through creation, editing, reviews, and updates. And often the early drafts, as well as the final version, are in the same directory or file share. Very rarely does a public facing web site content have such issues.

Sometimes content management systems make it easy to implement what is really ‘search engine optimization’ or SEO; but it seems all too often that the optimization is left to the enterprise search platform to work out.

We have an updated two-part series on data quality and search, starting here. We hope you find it helpful; let us know if you have any questions!

First Impressions on the new Forrester Wave

The new Forrester Wave™: Cognitive Search And Knowledge Discovery Solutions is out, and once again I think Forrester, along with Gartner and others, miss the mark on the real enterprise search market. 

In the belief that sharing my quick first impression will at least start a conversation going until I can write up a more complete analysis, I am going to share these first thoughts.

First, I am not wild about the new buzzterms 'cognitive search' and "insight engines". Yes, enterprise search can be intelligent, but it's not cognitive. which Webster defines as "of, relating to, or involving conscious mental activities (such as thinking, understanding, learning, and remembering)". HAL 9000 was cognitive software; "Did you mean" and "You might also like" are not cognition.  And enterprise search has always provided insights into content, so why the new 'insight engines'? 

Moving on, I agree with Forrester that Attivio, Coveo and Sinequa are among the leaders. Honestly, I wish Coveo was fully multi-platform, but they do have an outstanding cloud offering that in my mind addresses much of the issue.

However, unlike Forrester, I believe Lucidworks Fusion belongs right up there with the leaders. Fusion starts with a strong open source Solr-based core; an integrated administrative UI; a great search UI builder (with the recent acquisition of Twigkit); and multiple-platform support. (Yep, I worked there a few years ago, but well before the current product was created).

I count IDOL in with the 'Old Guard' along with Endeca, Vivisimo (‘Watson’) and perhaps others - former leaders still available, but offered by non-search companies, or removed from traditional enterprise search (Watson). And it will be interesting to see if Idol and its new parent, Microfocus, survive the recent shotgun wedding. 

Tier 2, great search but not quite “full” enterprise search, includes Elastic (which I believe is in the enviable position as *the* platform for IoT), Mark Logic, and perhaps one or two more.

And there are several newer or perhaps less-well known search offerings like Algolia, Funnelback, Swiftype, Yippy and more. Don’t hold their size and/or youth against them; they’re quite good products.

No, I’d say the Forrester report is limited, and honestly a bit out of touch with the real enterprise search market. I know, I know; How do I really feel? Stay tuned, I've got more to say coming soon. What do you think? Leave a comment below!

The Findwise Enterprise Search and Findability Survey 2016 is open for business

Would you find it helpful to benchmark your Enterprise Search operations against hundreds of corporations, organizations and government agencies worldwide? Before you answer, would you find that information useful enough that you’re spend a few minutes answering a survey about your enterprise search practices? It seems like a pretty good deal to me to have real-world data from people just like yourself worldwide.

This survey, the results of which are useful, insightful, and actionable for search managers everywhere, provides the insight into many of the critical areas of search.

Findwise, the Swedish company with offices there and in Denmark, Norway Poland, Norway and London, is gathering data now for the 2016 version of their annual Enterprise Search and Findability Survey at http://bit.ly/1sY9qiE.

What sorts of things will you learn?

Past surveys give insight into the difference between companies will happy search users versus those whose employees prefer to avoid using internal search. One particularly interesting finding last year was that there are three levels of ‘search maturity’, identifiable by how search is implemented across content.

The least mature search organizations, roughly 25% of respondents, have search for specific repositories (siloes), but they generally treat search as ‘fire and forget’, and once installed, there is no ongoing oversight.

More mature search organizations that represent about 60% of respondents, have one search for all silos; but maintaining and improving search technology has very little staff attention.

The remaining 15% of organizations answering the survey invest in search technology and staff, and continuously attempt to improve search and findability. These organizations often have multiple search instances tailored for specific users and repositories.

One of my favorite findings a few years back was that a majority of enterprises have “one or less” full time staff responsible for search; and yet a similar majority of employees reported that search just didn’t work. The good news? Subsequent surveys have shown that staffing search with as few as 2 FTEs improves overall search satisfactions; and 3 FTEs seem to strongly improve overall satisfaction. And even more good news: Over the years, the trend in enterprise search shows that more and more organizations are taking search and findability seriously.

You can participate in the 2016 Findwise Enterprise Search and Findability Survey in just 10 or 15 minutes and you’ll be among the first to know what this year brings. Again, you’ll find the 2016 survey at http://bit.ly/1sY9qiE.

Gartner MQ 2014 for Search: Surprise!

Funny, just last week I tweeted about how late the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Search is this year. Usually it's out in March, and here it is, July.

Well, it's out - and boy does it have some surprises! My first take:

Coveo, a great search platform that runs on Windows only, is in the Leaders quadrant, and best overall in the "Completeness of Vision". Don't get me wrong, it's a great search platform; but I guess completeness of vision does not include completeness of platform. Linux your flavor? Sorry.

HP/Autonomy IDOL is in the upper right quadrant as well, back strong as the top in 'Ability to Execute' and in the top three on 'Completeness of Vision'. IDOL has always reminded me of the reliable old Douglas DC-3, described by aviation enthusiasts as 'a collection of parts flying in loose formation', but it really does offer everything enterprise search needs. And, because it loves big hardware, everything that HP loves to sell.

BA Insight surprised me with their Knowledge Integration Platform at the top of the Visionaries quadrant. It enhances Microsoft SharePoint Search, or runs with a stand-alone version of Lucene. It's very cool, yes. But I sure don't think of it as a search engine. Do you? More on this later.

Attivio comes in solid in the lower right 'Visionaries' quadrant. I'd really expected to see them further along on both measures, so I'm surprised.

I'm really quite disappointed that Gartner places my former employer Lucidworks solidly in the lower left 'Niche players' quadrant. I think Lucidworks has a very good vision of where they want to go, and I think most enterprises will find it compelling once they take a look. I don’t think I'm biased when I say that this may be Gartner's big miss this year. And OK, I understand that, like BA Insight's Knowledge product, Lucidworks needs a search engine to run, but it feels more like a true search platform.

Big surprise: IHS, which I have always thought as a publisher, has made it to the Gartner Niche quadrant as a search platform. Odd.

Other surprises: IBM in the Niche market quadrant, based on 'Ability to Execute'. Back at Verity, then CEO Philippe Courtot got the Gartner folks to admit that the big component of Ability to Execute was really about how long you could fund the project and I have to confess I figured IBM (and Google) as the MQ companies with the best cash position.

If you're not a Gartner client, I'm sorry you won't get the report or the insights Whit Andrews (@WhitAndrews _), a long time search analyst who knows his stuff. You can still find the report from several vendors happy to let you download the Gartner MQ Search from them. Search Google and find the link you most prefer, or call your vendor for a full copy.

/s/Miles

A paradigm shift in enterprise search

I've been involved in enterprise search since before the 'earthquake World Series' between the Giants and the A's in 1989. While our former company became part of LucidWorks last December, we still keep abreast of the market. But being a LucidWorks employee has brought me to a new realization: commercial enterprise search is pretty much dead.

Think back a few years: FAST ESP, Autonomy IDOL (including the then-recently acquired Verity), Exalead, and Endeca were the market. Now, every one of those companies has become part of a larger business. Some of the FAST technology lives on, buried in SharePoint 2013; Autonomy has suffered as part of HP because - well, because HP isn't what it was when Bill and Dave ran it. Current management doesn't know what they have in IDOL, and the awful deal they cut was probably based on optimistic sales numbers that may or may not have existed. Exalead, the engine I hoped would take the place of FAST ESP in the search market is now part of Dassault and is rarely heard of in search. And Endeca, the gem of a search platform optimized for the lucrative eCommerce market, has become one of three or four search-related companies in the Oracle stable. 

Microsoft is finally taking advantage of the technology acquired in the FAST acquisition for SharePoint 2013, but as long as it's tied to SharePoint - even with the ability to index external content - it's not going to be an enterprise-wide distribution - or a 'big data' solution. SharePoint Hadoop? Aslongf as you bring SQL Server. Mahout? Pig? I don't think so. There are too many companies that want or need Linux for their servers rather than Windows.

Then there is Google, the ultimate closed-box solution. As long as you use the Google search button/icon, users are happy – at least at first. If you have sixty guys named Sarah? Maybe not.

So what do we have? A few good options generally from small companies that tend to focus on hosted eCommerce - SLI Systems and Dieselpoint; and there’s Coveo, a strong Windows platform offering.

Solr is the enterprise search market now. My employer, LucidWorks, was the first, and remains the primary commercial driver to the open source Apache project. What's interesting is the number of commercial products based on Solr and it's underlying platform, Lucene.

Years ago, commercial search software was the 'safe choice'. Now I think things have changed: open source search is the safe choice for companies where search is mission. Do you agree?

I'll be writing more about why I believe this to be the case over the coming weeks and months: stay tuned.

/s/Miles

 

Last call for submiting papers to ESS NY

This Friday, December 21, is the last day for submitting papers and workshops to ESS in NY in May 21-22. See the information site at the Enterprise Search Summit Call for Speakers page.

If you work with enterprise search technologies (or supporting technologies), chances are the things you've learned would be valuable to other folks. If you have an in-depth topic, write it up as a 3 hour workshop; if you have a success story, or lessons learned you can share, submit a talk for a 30-45 minute session.

I have to say, this conference has enjoyed a multi-year run in terms of quality of talks and excellent Spring weather.. see you in May?

 

 

Mind the gap

A few weeks ago, a former client asked me about the 'lay of the land' in enterprise search - which companies were the one to be considered for evaluation. It's something I'm frequently asked, and one big reason why I strive to stay current with all of the leading commercial and open source vendors in the market.

As I pulled together the list, it occurred to me that recent consolidation has led to an odd situation: there is no longer a 'mid-market' in enterprise search.

Under $25,000(US), there are a number of options from free and low-cost open source (SearchBlox and my employer LucidWorks come to mind). 

Google has discontinued its low cost (blue) search appliance, and raised the cost of its regular (yellow) one to apparently be well above $25K.

We also have the old-school major commercial vendors - like FAST (now Microsoft SharePoint Search); Autonomy (now HP); Endeca (now Oracle), and finally Vivisimo (now IBM). Trend or not, these enterprise search products command high initial outlay, often significant implementation costs, and high ongoing 'support' once you've rolled it out. Looks like the mid-market is gone.

So now the question is: What do you get for the difference in price? I'd suggest not much in the way of capability; nothing in terms of scalability; and very very little in the way of flexibility.  I guess it's 'caveat emptor' - buyer beware!

What about some products/projects I haven't mentioned? Well, the focus of my article here is on enterprise search. Great candidates like Coveo are 'windows only' which disqualifies them from my list. I suppose you could consider the GSA as not enterprise ready, but I think appliances make the OS issue irrelevant. I've also omitted mentioning other projects because they have not yet shipped a 'Version 1.0' release - that's testware, no matter who it's from. And I'm sure there are open source projects where a single person is making all the calls - I don't consider that enterprise ready either.

I’ll be looking for the day when the big guys start value pricing their software licenses and help bring the market into line with today’s reality.

If you think I've unfairly represented the market, let me know - I'm not shy about posting comments that differ with my viewpoint.

 

s/Miles

 

Lucid positioning for success in open source search

Lucid Imagination is the Redwood Shores company whose charter is to market advanced products based on the open source Lucene/Solr project. With a large number of the Apache project committers in its employ, they have the technical wherewithal to succeed, but they never really screamed 'business success' - until recently.

In December of last year, Lucid's board hired Paul Doscher as CEO, presumably to make Lucid's premier product, LucidWorks Enterprise, a success in the marketplace. He seems to have been a good choice: he was the guy at Exalead who built a first-class organization in the US; and who was as responsible as anyone in making Exalead an attractive acquisition last summer for Dassault. 

Now, just a few months later, Paul has hired Mike Moody, formerly of Spigit, to be Lucid's EVP of Development. I had the opportunity last year to work with Mike at Spigit, an up-and-coming product in its own right, and I suspect having Mike on-board will have a positive impact on Lucid's products and services in the coming years.

It's tough to break into the commercial search market, but it seems to me that Lucid is serious about being a leader in the space - soon.

 

 

The importance of context in enterprise search

For years we have talked about the important of context when it comes to enterprise search. we blogged about it as long ago as 2007 and we stressed that the context of the user, the content, and the query all need to be considered between the time the user click 'Search' and the search platform gets the extended query. As an example, we've used things like Google's special treatment of 12-digit numbers that match the algorithm for FedEx tracking numbers. 

Now it appears that Google has started plans to expand their use of context as published in the Wall Street Journal and called out in blog postings from Avalon's Joe Hilger and Mashable's Lance Ulanoff. Google's Amit Singhal spoke of the shift from keywords to meaning, a change not only at Google but, over time, in the enterprise search platforms most companies use internally every day.

As we talk about in a recent webinar 'Secrets your Search Vendor Won't Tell You', search platform vendors have always trailed user requirements; sometimes you just need to write your own custom code to create a search experience users are happy with. You often need to add your own pre-search processing code to analyze the user query and create an expanded query using the vendor-specific search operators; make the most of standard platform capabilities; and post-process the search result list in order to give yours a great, meaningful, helpful set of results and actions.

At ESS New York in May, we're doing a pre-conference workshop that will take a deep dive into this process. We'll talk about how you can do this extended processing in several popular search platforms, and will include some representative examples of how you can implement this type of contextual enhancement for several popular search platforms. If you're going to be in New York anyway, come to the workshop!

s/Miles

 

 

Webinar: What users want from enterprise search in 2012

If you ask the average enterprise user what he or she wants from their internal search platform, chances are good that they will tell you they want search 'just like Google'. After all, people are born with the ability to use Google; why should they need to learn how to use their internal search?

The problem is that web search works so well because, at the sheer scale of the internet, search can take advantage of methodologies that are not directly applicable to the intranet. Yet many of the things that make the public web experience so good can, in fact, be adapted in the enterprise. Our opinion is that, beyond a base level, the success of any enterprise search platform depends on how it is implemented and managed rather than on the core technology.

In this webinar we'll talk about what users want, and how you can address the specific challenges of enterprise content and still deliver a satisfying and successful enterprise search experience inside the firewall.

Register today for our first webinar of the new year scheduled for January 25 : What enterprise users want from search in 2012.