THE '17 DATABASES' PROBLEM
Business enterprise search is evolving from its original use case, which can be described as "search for search's sake." The goal then was to generate a general index of information repositories and provide a front end for employees to browse through it, the way they would the Web--with simple queries that coughed up a long list of results. Today, companies approach business search to get better insight into specific domains and address business problems. "Customers aren't looking to buy search," says Craig Reinhardt, director of enterprise content management at IBM. "They want better business results. We look at search as a critical ingredient that needs to be integrated with other applications."

Reinhardt points to customers, such as those in law enforcement, that use IBM's OmniFind Enterprise search platform to find patterns in criminal records, or to manufacturers that use the search software to analyze customer comments on blogs and wikis.

Microsoft sees significant opportunity in this business-oriented approach to search, which was a major driver for its January acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer. National Instruments' situation illustrates why Microsoft's view makes sense. In early 2005, National was looking for a way to streamline access for different lines of business to all the content it gathers on its customers.

"We made a list of all the databases and repositories where we had customer information," VP Graff says, adding that he quickly found certain groups were tapped into different systems--for instance, the sales group used the CRM application, while engineering tracked the company's tech support Web pages--but no one group had access to everything. "We called it the '17 databases' problem," he says.

The company had deployed the Fast Enterprise Search Platform to enhance the search capabilities of its customer-facing Web site, and Graff thought search might be a good way to unlock the silos that contained information about its customers. These silos included the CRM system, corporate file servers, Lotus Notes, Oracle databases, and an internal wiki.

"It's been a huge hit," Graff says. "Our salespeople use it to do research on customers prior to visits. Marketing and engineering management use it to get feedback on what customers are doing with products. Even our CEO uses it."

A key to success is the search interface, which employees access through an intranet. National customized the user interface to let people select facets of a search. One surprisingly popular choice is age. "You can look at the creation date an order was processed, or the date a tech support query happened," he says. "Users can bring the freshest information to the top of the pile."

Companies also are asking search to provide more context, based on a variety of factors, such as the person conducting the search. For example, Google's latest version of its Search Appliance leverages Active Directory and LDAP-based directories to personalize search results based on the searcher's organizational role.

"You can create a policy group for the sales department that gives higher priority to documents talking about pricing," says Nitin Mangtani, lead product manager for Google Enterprise Search. "For engineers, you can give higher importance to engineering documents."

Another example of context is Recommind's MindServer search platform, which can be augmented with modules, such as Expertise Location. MindServer uses information gleaned from indexed data and other sources, such as HR portals, to associate users with expertise in different content areas based on that user's work product. It can serve as an extended company directory to help employees locate colleagues with specialized knowledge.

Microsoft also is pursuing expert search.

"We refer to it as 'people search,'" says Jared Spataro, director of enterprise search at Microsoft. "It will relate concepts to people in the organization who might know something about something. It's something we hear a lot about from our customers." Spataro says the company wants to lead in this area, but it hasn't yet announced specifics.