As founder andmanaging director ofISYS, Ian Davies guidesFulfilling the Promise of the company's overalldirection and serves asits chief technologyexpert. He is widelyregarded as a visionaryEnterprise Search and tireless businessleader among Sydney,Australia's substantialIan Davies technology population.By Ian Davies, Founder and Managing Director, ISYS Search Software Ian designed theoriginal ISYS textretrieval system in 1988 after recognizing a marketopportunity for search engine technology. In 1993, hewas elected a Computerworld Fellow in recognition ofhe fundamental objective of enterprise ? Query: Everyone uses different meth-T his achievements in software.search couldn't be more straightforward- ods for searching for information. Someto help people find information fast. are search novices who rely on natural Prior to founding ISYS, Ian spent 10 years writing as aUnfortunately, some vendors continue to language processing. Others are experts consulting technical editor for one of Australia's leadingspeak in tongues, proffering technology with query syntax. Some need to search PC magazines. Additionally, he spent four years with athat requires a Ph.D. to understand and a metadata, while others focus exclusively prominent commercial software house in Australiateam of them to implement. on full text. Regardless of your employ- before becoming an independent consultant in IBMThe good news is companies are begin- ees' familiarity or preferences, your mainframe fourth-generation languages.ning to see the light-that search isn't a dif- enterprise search tools should accountficult or costly endeavor. In fact, keeping in for these differences, as well as providemind the following three keys, businesses of "sounds like..." and "starts with..." ees spend less time looking for or duplicat-all sizes can finally capitalize on the promise options for when they don't know the ing corporate information, which translatesof enterprise search. correct spelling of a word. into cost savings and productivity increas-? Results Navigation: There's nothing es. But if the upfront and ongoing costs ofmore frustrating than being presented with the technology are too high, the benefit is1. Don't Forget the Desktop a long list of results with no ability to sort, greatly diminished. Solutions that requireWhen you consider that a large portion preview or filter. Enterprise search is most outside consulting translate into a higherof relevant corporate knowledge resides on effective when users can benefit from on- initial investment, while a per-documentemployees' hard drives and in their e-mail, the-fly categorization; results clustering pricing module serves as an obstacle toit's almost criminal to fail to capture desk- and grouping; a results preview pane; unlocking all of your corporate content andtop information. In fact, the term "enter- "search within" and other filtering options; essentially ensures a higher total cost ofprise search" becomes a bit of a misnomer and advanced hinting, such as displaying ownership.when these repositories fall outside the summary information or metadata. Search should be simple to implementscope of the solution. ? Discovery: Without features like "hit high- and charged according to the people whoPerhaps most beneficial when it comes lighting" or "hit-to-hit navigation," actually benefit from it-your user com-to tools that can quickly and easily tie employees are often left wondering why a munity. And if you're paying several hun-desktops into the overall enterprise search search engine has returned a certain result. dreds of thousands of dollars for yoursolution is the fact that you can take a tac- Imagine the smile on their faces when your enterprise search solution, you're payingtical approach to enterprise search. Start search tool says that a 152-page PDF doc- too much.with a workgroup of 10 employees or a ument is the one they want, only to give Whether the situation calls for searchdepartment of 50. Let them prove the them no hint as to why it was selected. Your across desktops, networks, Websites,value of enterprise search and then expand search technology should not only high- intranets or other enterprise systems, enter-outward. In doing so, you can rest easy light your search terms, but also take you prise search needs to account for thes... [download for more]
