Content Matters

Google and Bearing Point today announced a partnership, under which Bearing Point will launch an enterprise search practice, focused around bringing Google's search appliance to  the enterprise.
While the Google search appliance has been out for a couple of years, they have not made the inroads in enterprise search that they may have anticipated. 
This partnership reinforces the fact that enterprise search is different from web search.  The page rank algorithms that made Google so successful on the web don't easily translate to the enterprise.  Within a corporation or department, the value of a document does not correlate with its popularity.  If it did, the most important documents on an intranet would be the holiday schedule and cafeteria menu. 
In addition, much of the valuable content inside the enterprise is not stored in html files, but instead within databases, financial systems and document management systems.  A compelling search solution must fully integrate all this content, particularly in research-intensive industries like pharmaceutical or chemical companies.
These solutions require integration, not a plug and play server.  The BearingPoint partnership can provide Google with the professional services organization needed for these complex implementations.
The enterprise search market has been shifting in recent years with newcomers like FAST Search & Transfer, Endeca and others taking market share away from longtime leaders Verity, Autonomy and Convera.  Google has the name recognition, and now the professional services partner, to make a serious dent in this market.