Enterprise Search: Essentially Marginalized to Good Enough
November 9, 2014
I use Google Trends to see what’s hot and what’s not in the world of information retrieval. If you want to use the free version of Google Trends, navigate to http://www.google.com/trends/ and explore. That’s some of what Google does to make decisions about how much of Larry Page’s “wood” to put behind the Google Search Appliance eight ball.
I plugged in “enterprise search.” When one allows Google to output its version of the popularity of the term, you get this graph. It shows a downward trend but the graph is without much context. The pale lettering does not help. Obviously Googlers do not view the world through trifocals with 70 year old eyes. Here’s the Trends’ output for “enterprise search”:
Now let’s add some context. From the “enterprise search” Trends’ output, click the pale blue plus and add this with quotes: “big data.” Here’s the output for this two factor analysis:
One does not have to be an Ivy League data scientist to see the difference between the hackneyed “enterprise search” and more zippy but meaningless “Big Data.” I am not saying Big Data solutions actually work. What’s clear is that pushing enterprise search is not particularly helpful when the Trends’ reveal a flat line for years, not hours, not days, not months–years.
I think it is pretty clear why I can assert with confidence that “enterprise search” appears to be a non starter. I know why search vendors persist in telling me what “enterprise search” is. The vendors are desperate to find the grip that a Tupinambis lizard possesses. Instead of clinging to a wall in the sun at 317 R. Dr. Emílio Ribas (Cambui) (where I used to live in Campinas, SP), the search vendors are clinging to chimera. The goal is to make sales, but if the Google data are even sort of correct, enterprise search is flat lining.
Little wonder that consultant reports like those from the mid tier crowd try to come up with verbiage that will create sales leads for the research sponsors; case in point, knowledge quotient. See Meme of the Moment for a fun look at IDC’s and search “expert” Dave Schubmehl’s most recent attempt to pump up the music.
The question is, “What is generating revenue?” In a sense, excitement surrounds vendors who deliver solutions. These include search, increasingly supplied by open source software. Elasticsearch is zipping along, but search is not the main dish. Search is more like broccoli or carrots.
The good news is that there is a group of companies, numbering about 30, which have approached search differently. As a result, many of these companies are growing and charting what I call “next generation search.”
Want to know more? Well, that’s good. Watch for my coverage of this sector in the weeks and months ahead. I will toss a small part of our research into my November Information Today column. A tiny chunk. Keep that in mind.
In the meantime, think critically about the craziness flowing from many mid tier or azure chip consulting firms. Those “outputs” are marketing, self aggrandizing, and, for me, downright silly. What’s that term for doing trivial actions again and again?
Stephen E Arnold, November 9, 2014
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