Enterprise Search Deployment Time
January 14, 2010
Our Overflight service snagged a news item in May 2009. The title was “Airbus Licenses Vivisimo Velocity Search Platform”. The release was good news for Vivisimo and straight forward, saying:
Vivisimo (Vivisimo.com), a leader in enterprise search, has entered into a major agreement with aircraft manufacturer Airbus for the license of the Vivisimo Velocity Search Platform. The license covers the corporate-wide intranet for Airbus and some extranet services for Airbus customers, indexing up to two petabytes of data for more than 50,000 users. Vivisimo had already provided search for a group within Airbus before winning the company’s broader corporate business in a competitive setting. In a solution proof of concept, Vivisimo Velocity demonstrated its capability to handle the complexity of Airbus’ many data repositories while respecting the company’s various security parameters.
When I read this, I thought that Airbus made a wise decision. A deployment and an evaluation process was used. That’s smart. Most organizations license an engine and then plunge ahead.
The news item I received in my email this morning was equally clear. “Airbus Lifts Off Vivisimo Velocity to Provide More than 50,000 Users the Power of Search” states:
Vivisimo (Vivisimo.com), a leader in enterprise search, today announced the successful installation of its award-winning Vivisimo Velocity Search Platform with the world’s leading aircraft manufacturer Airbus. Through this deployment, Velocity is powering search across its corporate-wide intranet and its customers, indexing up to two petabytes of data for more than 50,000 users.
After a quote the news release said:
In less than one month since the completed installation of Velocity, search has become the fastest growing application on the customer portal (AirbusWorld) homepage in terms of usage, which has resulted in increased page views.
I think the uptake information is good news for Airbus users and for Vivisimo. The other upside of my having these two statements is that it is possible to calculate roughly the time required for a prudent organization to move from decision to deploy to actual availability of the search service. The deal was signed in May 2009, and the system went online about January 2010. That means that after the trial period, another six months was required to deploy the system.
Several observations:
- Appliance vendors have indicated that their solution requires less time. One vendor pegs the deployment time in a matter of days. Another suggested a month for a complicated installation.
- The SaaS search vendors have demonstrated a deployment time of less than four hours for one test we ran for a governmental unit. Other vendors have indicated times in the days to two week periods, depending on the complexity of the installation. The all time speed champ is Blossom.com, which we used for the Threat Open Source Information Gateway project.
- System centric vendors with solutions that snap into SharePoint, for example, have indicated an installation time of a half day to as much as a week, depending on the specific SharePoint environment.
- Tool kit vendors typically require weeks or months to deploy an enterprise search system. However, in certain situations like a search system for a major publishing company’s online service, the time extended beyond six months.
What’s this mean? Vivisimo’s installation time is on a par with other high profile systems’ deployment times. The reason is that the different components must be integrated with the clients’ systems. In addition, certain types of customization—not always possible with appliances or SaaS solutions—are like any other software set up. Tweaking takes time.
With Google’s emphasis on speed, the Google Search Appliance is positioning itself to be a quicker install that some of the high profile enterprise systems.
What’s this mean? It looks to me that one group of vendors and services can deliver speedier installations. Other vendors offset speed with other search requirements. Beyond that obvious statement, I will have to think about the cost implications of deployment time.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 14, 2010
No one paid me to write this short article. Why would anyone pay me? It’s been 65 years of financial deprivation. I think I have to report this monetary fact to the Social Security folks.
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Generally, the deployment time for enterprise search depends on the diversity and complexity of the underlying repositories, complexity of the organization’s security framework, internal human processes, and others. An “appliance” speeds up the handling of none of these things, but it can slow them down when the appliance can’t handle the complexity or custom needs. An obsolescent product architecture also slows things down. Gotta get the right product for the right need.
[…] a solution that will result in quantifiable returns. I found the recent blog written by Steve on “Search Deployment Time” to be right on the mark, validating that to execute a business solution effectively takes time. To […]