Enterprise Search: It’s Easy but Work Is Never Done
July 17, 2008
The Burton Group caught my attention with its report describing Microsoft a couple of years ago as a superplatform. I liked the term, but the report struck me as overly enthusiastic in favor of Microsoft’s server products.
I was surprised when I saw part one of Margie Semilof’s interview with two Burton Group consultants, Guy Creese and Larry Cannell. These folks were described as experts in content management, a discipline with a somewhat checkered history in the pantheon of enterprise software applications. You can read the first part interview here. The interview carries a July 15, 2008, date, and I am capturing my personal thoughts on July 16, 2008. That’s my mode of operation, a euro short and a day late. Also, I am not enthusiastic about CMS experts making the jump to enterprise search expertise. The leap can be made, but it’s like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
The interview contains a rich vein of intellectual gold or what appears to me to be sort of gold. I jotted down two points made by the Burton experts, and I wanted to offer some color around selected points. When you read the interview, your conclusions and take aways will probably differ from mine. I am an opinionated goose, so if that bothers you, quit reading now.
Let me address two points.
First, this question and answer surprised me:
Question: How much development work is require with search technology?
Answer by Guy Creese, Burton Group expert in content management: It’s pretty easy… Usually a company is up and running and can see most of its documents without trouble.
Yikes. Enterprise search dissatisfies anywhere from half to two thirds of a system’s users. Enterprise search systems are among the most troublesome enterprise applications to set up, optimize, and maintain. Even the Google Search Appliance, one of the most toaster like search solutions, takes some effort to get into fighting shape. Customization requires expertise with the OneBox API. “Seeing documents” and finding information are two quite different functions in my experience.
Second, this question and answer ran counter to the research I conducted for the first three editions of Enterprise Search Report (2004-2006) and my most recent study Beyond Search (2008).
Search technology has some care and feeding involved. How do companies organize the various tasks?
Answer by Guy Creese, Burton Group expert in content management: This is not onerous. Companies don’t have huge armies [to do this work], but someone has to know the formats, whether to index, how quickly they refresh. If no one worries about this, then search becomes less effective. So beyond the eye candy, you have to know how to maintain and adjust your search.
“Not onerous” runs counter to the data I have gathered in surveys and focus groups. “Formats” invoke transformation. Transformation can be difficult and expensive. Hooking search into work processes requires analysis and then customization of search functions. Search that processes content in content management systems often require specialized set up, particularly when the search system indexes duplicate or versioned documents. Rich text processing, a highly desirable function, can wander off the beaten path unless customization and tuning are performed.
Observations
There are a handful of people who have a solid understanding of enterprise search. Miles Kehoe, one of the Verity wizards, is the subject of a Search Wizards Speak interview that will be published on ArnoldIT.com on July 21, 2008. His company, New Idea Engineering, has considerable expertise in search, and you can read his views on what must be done to ensure a satisfactory deployment. Another expert is my son, Erik Arnold, whose company Adhere Solutions, specializes in customizing and integrating the Google Search Appliance into enterprise environments. To my knowledge, neither Mr. Kehoe nor Mr. Arnold characterizes search as a “pretty easy” task. In fact, I can’t recall anyone in my circle of professional acquaintances describing enterprise search as “pretty easy.”
Second, I am concerned that content management systems are expanding into applications and functions that are not germane to these systems’ capabilities. For example, CMS needs search. Interwoven has struck a deal with Vivisimo to provide search that “just works” to Interwoven customers. Vivisimo has worked hard to create a seamless experience, but, based on my sources, the initial work was not “pretty easy”. In fact, Interwoven had a mixed track record in delivering search before hooking up with Vivisimo. But CMS vendors are also asserting that their system is social. Well, CMS allows different people to index a document. I think that’s a social and collaborative function. But social software to me suggests Digg, Twitter, and Mahalo type functionality. Implementing these technologies in a Broadvision (if it is still paddling upstream) or Vignette might take some doing.
Third, SharePoint (a favorite of Burton if I recall the superplatform document) is a polymorphic software system. Once it was a CMS. Now it is a collaboration platform just like Exchange. I think these are marketing words slapped on servers which are positioned to make sales, not solve problems. SharePoint includes a search function, which is improving. But deploying a robust search system within SharePoint is hard in my experience. I prefer using third party software from such companies as ISYS Search Software or the use of third-party tools. ISYS, along with Coveo, offer systems that are indeed much easier to deploy, configure, and maintain than SharePoint. But planning and experience with SharePoint are necessary.
I look forward to the second part of this interesting interview with CMS experts about enterprise search. Agree? Disagree? Quack back.
Stephen Arnold, July 17, 2008
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[…] On July 17, I commented on the first part of an interview conducted by Margie Semilof. Her interview subjects were two consultants attached to the Burton Group. You can read my views and opinions about Part I here. […]