Enterprise Search Vendors: A Partial List

June 24, 2016

I spoke with a confused and unbudgeted worker bee at a giant outfit this weekend. The stellar professional was involved in figuring out what to do about enterprise search. The story is one I have heard many times in the last 40 years. The system doesn’t meet the needs of the users. The system is over budget. The system does not index in real time. Yadda yadda yadda.

The big question was, “What are the enterprise search vendors offering a system which actually works, does not experience downtime, cost overruns, and user outrage. Note that this is not the word “outage.” The word is “outrage”.

I don’t know of such a system. As a helpful 72 year old, I rattled off a list of vendors who purport to offer Big Data capable, next generation semantic-linguistic-NLP systems. True to form, I repeated the list twice. I thought he would cry.

For those of you who want to know the vendors I plucked from my list of outfits in the search and content processing game, I reproduce the list. If you want upsides, downsides, license fees, gotchas, and other assorted details, I will provide the information. But since you are not likely to buy me dinner this evening, you will have to pay for my thoughts.

Here’s the selected list. Reader, start your browser:

Attivio
Coveo
dtSearch
Elasticsearch (Lucene)
Fabasoft Mindbreeze
IBM Omnifind
IHS Goldfire
Lookeen
Lucid Works (Solr)
Marklogic
Maxxcat
Polyspot
Sinequa
Solcara
Squiz Funnelback
Thunderstone
X1
Yippy

There are quite a few outfits whose systems do search like Palantir, but I trimmed the list to companies for my worried pal.

What’s interesting is that most of these outfits explain that their systems are much, much more than search and retrieval. Believe it or not as Mr. Ripley used to say.

Factoid: Most of these outfits have been around for quite a few years. Only Elasticsearch has managed to become a “brand” in the search space. What happened to Autonomy, Convera, Endeca, Fast Search & Transfer, and Verity since I wrote the first three editions of the Enterprise Search Report between 2003 and 2007? Ugly for some.

Search is a tough problem and has yet to deliver what users expect. Remember Google killed its search appliance. Ads are a better business because they spell money for Alphabet.

Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2016

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Enterprise search, News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.