Content Matters

IBM and Yahoo have introduced a new entry in the enterprise search market and the best part is, it's free.

The new IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is a downloadable software application that can be run on a server or standalone PC.  The application utilizes Yahoo's search interface, on top of the IBM OmniFind platform.  The free version can index up to 500k documents (making it more like workgroup search than enterprise search) but you can expand the capabilities by upgrading to IBM's Enterprise Search Starter Edition.

Until recently, enterprise search remained an expensive and complex application.  Only five years ago, a typical Verity (now Autonomy) search implementation might have cost $400-750k (including professional services) and require 3-6 months to implement.

Yahoo and Google are both going after the enterprise search market with a compelling message: why is enterprise search so complex and expensive, when Internet search works well for free?  Of course, there are differences between web search and enterprise search.  The PageRank system assigns a value to pages based upon links to that page from other popular sites.  For complex searching inside the enterprise, the most valuable documents might not be the most popular.

That being said, basic search can address the needs of most enterprise users.  And with Yahoo joining Google in pursuing this market, the days of half-million dollar search implementations are long gone.  And, as ZDNet points out, the target of their efforts is not so much the Autonomy's of the world, but more Microsoft and hierarchical file organization.

You can download or learn more about the free IBM/Yahoo software here.
To learn more, read posts from Searchblog  or ZDNet or this Reuters article via CNet.