FastForward Covers Exalead
June 20, 2009
Short honk: I was delighted to read “Expanding the Role and Capabilities of Search for the Enterprise” in the FastForward Web log. The author, Bill Ives, does a good job of covering what sets Exalead apart in the enterprise sector. I would have liked a bit more meat on the bone with regard to Exalead’s architecture because that is one of the key distinguishing features of the Exalead system. Without plumbing that is scalable and extensible, organizations cannot cope with the increasing flows of electronic information. Applications rest on a solid foundation. That’s what Exalead has because the engineering vision was cohesive, quite like the approach of the Google. Exalead is the real deal and operates without baggage, apologies, and work arounds in my experience.
Stephen Arnold, June 20, 2009
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2 Responses to “FastForward Covers Exalead”
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Hi Steve,
Thanks as always for noticing the little guys…However, if Exalead’s architecture distinguishes them and is so scalable, how come they aren’t in any large OEM relationships where scalability is critical ? Or how about highly scaling enterprise implementations?
Exalead is the undisptued King of ES in France but since when does that really mean anything to anyone outside of France.
I think you’d better check the architectures of some othe vendors before making a claim that scalability is what sets Exalead apart since anyone can claim to be anything but the proof is in your customer list…
Wow – someone’s feathers have been rather bent out of shape!
I love the comment around Exalead being the king of Enterprise Search in France…. It’s like “Exa Second” is saying that French organisations with complex and scalable enterprise search requirements are somehow different to organisations outwith France. Perhaps the French have been the first country to review Exalead in comparison to the other enterprise search vendors and chosen Exalead for the reasons that Steve has mentioned above. Perhaps Exalead has not been in other countries as long as the other vendors so they do not have these references yet?
I guess that Steve probably knows the marketplace a little better than “Exa Second” as we see, on this site, he takes the time to research the products in detail.
When I last reviewed a number of vendors I was looking for an organisation that could provide me with a scalable solution (tens of millions of documents), over several repositories with security, for a potential user base of thousands. For all the hype, I did not get one reference for any of the major enterprise search vendors that met this requirement. Interestingly, the references I did get for the “leading” enterprise search vendors all said that they were promised a lot but the reality was something very different and each one of the them said that Support was dreadful.
Looking at the architecture that the vendors suggest they need either huge Unix boxes or tens to hundreds of servers. The management of such a vast infrastructure, the amount of services to deploy, the length of time to deploy and the sheer cost do not add up. I think this is the real reason that organisations do not deploy to this level with these products – It just does not add up.
The requirements have not gone away, so if, Exalead is saying that they can offer scalable enterprise search up to hundreds of millions/billions of documents without vast amounts of hardware, consultancy and management and have the functionality to match the other enterprise search vendors then it has to be something to look at? If someone like Steve is saying so then, in my opinion, they
should be a vendor to compare to the others – if nothing else you may be surprised. In my experience, even if the others do scale (and I am still to be convinced) then the investment would need to be huge.