Differentiation: The New Enterprise Search Barrier
October 30, 2009
I don’t know one tree from another. When someone points out a maple and remarks that it is a sugar maple, I have no clue about a maple and even less information about a sugar maple. A lack of factual foundation means that I know nothing about trees. Sure, I know that most trees are green and that I can cut one down and burn it. But I don’t own a chain saw, so that general information means zero in the real world.
Now consider the clueless minions who have to purchase an enterprise search system. The difference between my tree knowledge and their search knowledge is easy to point out. Both of us are likely to become confused. To me, trees look alive. To the search procurement team, search systems look alike.
I received an announcement about a search system (nameless, of course) which asserted:
[The vendor’s product] is the first mobile enterprise search server to enable secure ‘anywhere’ access to data that resides across all information sources, including individual desktops, email stores, file shares, external sites and enterprise applications. Leveraging the [vendor’s product] Enterprise Server as its backbone, [the vendor’s product] Anywhere is capable of delivering secure, immediate access to any browser-enabled device, from an iPhone to a Blackberry and beyond.
I find that this write up is * very * similar to the Coveo email search solution, which has one of its features as mobile access plus a number of other bells and whistles.
I can document many other similarities in the way in which search vendors describe their products. In fact, I identified a phrase first used by Endeca in 2003 or 2004 as a key element in Microsoft’s marketing of its SharePoint search systems. My recollection is the phrase in question is “user experience.” Endeca may have snagged it somewhere just as Mozart plucked notes from his contemporaries.
Confusion among search vendors is easy. Many recycle words, phrases, and buzzwords, hoping that their spin will win customers. One thing is certain. Vendors have the azure chip consultants in a tizzy. One prominent azure chip outfit in New York has pegged Google a laggard and a product that has yet to make its appearance as a leader.
Procurement teams? Baffled for sure. Differentiation is needed, but it doesn’t come by recycling another vendor’s marketing collateral or relying on the azure chip crowd to cook up a new phrase to baffle the paying customers, or some of the paying customers.
Vendors, differentiate. Don’t imitate.
Stephen Arnold, October 30, 2009
A former Ziffer bought me dinner this week. Does that count as compensation? I deserve more.
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One Response to “Differentiation: The New Enterprise Search Barrier”
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Steve,
People I respect, like Don Norman, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville have been using the term “user experience” for years, and it means something specific, which needed a name.
“User interface” is the browser or desktop app, with menus and form fields and so on. “Functionality” is the back-end functionality: in search, that’s the query, retrieval and relevance algorithms. The whole lot of it put together is the UX, (user experience). If that’s not right, why bother? You can have a gorgeous design and a fantastic algorithm, but if the UX fails, the search fails.
Not that I necessarily want vendors to blather about it, but I do want some of them to understand UX, to make sure their systems can be usable instead of forcing the customers to do it all individually.
Avi