Enterprise Search Market Adoption
If you think of the bell curve, Enterprise Search is just now just crossing the chasm from early adopter into the beginning of mass market. In fact, Google has now bundled the hardware and software together into a single appliance and made the implementation process a two–week project, rather than a year-long process. Now, average sized organizations—not just Fortune 1000 companies—can afford the time and money to implement it.

How Does Enterprise Search Work?
Everyone has used the Google Search Engine which goes out and looks in many different places for information. So what we’re talking about is basically the same process, but within your company. Enterprise Search talks to different places where information is stored in your organization—databases, applications, and file stores such as drives and content management systems such as SharePoint. In addition to providing users with an interface that they’re already familiar with from having used Google.com, you get real-time document-level security while maintaining your organization’s existing security requirement controls.

Google Enterprise Search vs. Microsoft SharePoint
Although Google is leading this charge, Microsoft is also banging the drum. But there are major differences between the two offerings. With Google, you get an “out-of-the-box” Enterprise Search ready to go that searches across an index of corporate data from a variety of repositories. SharePoint also has its strengths but it can be a little trickier to configure.

Check out a recorded webinar we presented on November 13, “Google vs. Microsoft: The Enterprise Search Battleground” for a deep dive comparison and discussion on the topic.

Underlying Causes Behind Information Access Challenges

Users Now Expect Speed
When users use Google internet search, they are used to getting results in subsecond speed. Most current enterprise systems are painfully slow—you put in a query and it takes two minutes to return a result. Today’s users don’t have that kind of patience and as indexes grow, you have to add more servers which isn’t always feasible. The advantages of the Google appliance are its speed, its small footprint, and its scalability—as your organizational needs change, you can simply unlock more capacity within the same appliance.

Results Relevancy Is Key
But let’s face it, it doesn’t matter how fast your search is; if it’s not returning relevant search results, enterprise search is worthless. Fortunately, relevancy is a task at which Google is particularly good. They’re arguably the best on the web (70% of users cite Google as their preferred search engine) and they’re believed to be the best behind the firewall as well. There are other search tools out there, such as Endeca and Autonomy but they aren’t as far along in their indexing technology or market adoption.

GreenPages’ Google Jump Start Solutions
GreenPages offers affordable turnkey Google Jump Start Search implementation solutions. So if you want to create a secure, robust, scalable search tool for your employees that won’t negatively affect your network speed—or your budget—simply give us a call and we can get started.