Hi Jon - great article, and thanks for the reference to our upcoming Market IQ on Findability (archived webinar is available, free report coming out by mid July).
Interesting that Microsoft and Yahoo! have been working to compete on the free end, yet Microsoft spent $1.2 Billion on FAST, and is in their insane acquisition frenzy trying to acquire Yahoo! against all common sense.
For the needs of enterprises, the desire to buy Yahoo! for their web search and advertising reach seems an awful distraction. I'm writing more on that front in the next 24 hours regarding their Powerset acquisition.
On the free front, let's not forget that commodity search comes along with SharePoint, and there is always Lucene (and variants) on the Open Source front.
I've seen the Forrester statement about being wary of manipulating relevance rankings a number of times now. It puzzles me. I've never, in the last 8 years, seen an organization implement changes to relevance ranking that had turned into a time-consuming factor, nor that had dire consequences. In far more cases, people are either not able to manipulate the algorithm/methods (SharePoint for example has been notorious in this area), or are not aware that such a thing would even be possible.
Very simple filters/flags, such as jumping "vetted" or "expert" materials to the top of the list can do wonders. Adding "social input" into relevancy ranking (items that have been tagged, ranked, rated, recommended) is of course a rising phenomenon as well.
The main problem of search is that not nearly enough people are implementing it, and to our statistic you've incorporated, that 69% of respondents said that <50% of content is online, is a much more important impediment to Findability than the type of search solution used.
Ownership, strategy, availability, integration AND features make up a solid Findability solution.
We've all begun the journey, but the end is not yet in sight.
Cheers,
Dan Keldsen
Director, Market Intelligence at AIIM.org
http://www.aiim.org/findability
|
Does Verizon's Voyager stack up to the iPhone? |
|
|
5 IT skills that won't boost your salary 
[1,407]
Women 4 times more likely than men to cough up personal info [589]
Japan's 10 funniest tech-related commercials [Videos] [407]
Throwing away a promo CD is "unauthorized distribution"? [1,265]
Adults too quick to dismiss educational video games [682]
Attack of the iPhone clones [Slideshow] [578]
10 things IT needs to know about AJAX [1,258]
This Year's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries [Slideshow] [409]
|
|
Thunderstone Software worthy of consideration
Thunderstone's TEXIS search development platform compares very favorably with marketplace offerings from Autonomy, FAST, etc. And a complete line of Thunderstone Search Appliances provide an attractive alternative to the Google Appliances. All of Thunderstone's enterprise search solutions include a one-time, perpetual license. These powerful, scalable and flexible offerings from Thunderstone deserve an in-depth look by anyone serious about today's state-of-the-art information access and retrieval options.
What's new? Nothing here.
You state "a June study by AIIM claims users are still frustrated by the limitations of enterprise search", yet your review finds the old enterprise vendors, the ones likely causing the user dissatisfaction, as being the top rated search providers? If these guys are so good, why are nearly half the user dissatisfied?
User satisfaction is an emotional measure, and should be considered along side scalability, security and ease of implementation as key requirements. But, I never read a search experience survey that asked me how well the system scaled, or if the security works. So, maybe the search experience, and confidence one finds in a brand name should actually be higher priorities?
Did you actually put these products through a head-to-head evaluation? Did you include end users in the evaluation, or just IT? I would like to see how the 19 vendors left out of the evaluation would rate... if only they would pay to play
Post new comment