Enterprise Search: Evidence It Is a Commodity
January 17, 2015
I was browsing through some information gathered by Overflight last week. I cam across an interesting page showing Libraries Australia Architecture Overview. Here’s a miniature of the diagram. The link provides a larger version. Where is search? Well, it is in the middle, represented by a purple storage icon.
The search system is Solr. I find this interesting for several reasons:
First, Solr replaced the Australian-developed TeraText search system, which I think is pretty good. TeraText was a commercial product, and Solr is an open source system.
Second, Solr is a component in a far larger system. No surprise here, but the diagram makes clear that search is a utility supporting many other library functions. For vendors who make search the fabric for a large-scale application, the Libraries Australia team may want you to give them a lecture about ways to improve their system.
Third, Libraries Australia has a number of systems, each of which presumably has its native search tools. The implication is that Solr provides one screen access to these diverse resources. I wonder if the Oracle DBA uses Solr instead of the native Oracle tools. My thought is that the Solr champions see no reason to fool with Oracle command lines. The DBA, on the other hand, may see information access from a different point of view.
Net net: A commercial account closes, and an open source account begins. Does this fact suggest that closing deals for proprietary search systems might be more difficult in 2015?
Stephen E Arnold, January 17, 2015
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