SharePoint: Another “Free” Behind-the-Firewall Search System?
March 3, 2008
It’s 6 am in cheery Louisville International Airport, but the word “international” can be misleading. The news this morning is that Microsoft will roll out a “new” SharePoint search service. You can read the breathless InfoWorld story here. The announcement will be made, I believe, at one, maybe two, separate Microsoft conferences this week.
The “free” word is a powerful marketing tool for commercial firms. When it comes to behind-the-firewall search, “free” is a synonym for demonstration product. The set up, configuration, debug process, optimization, and operation of a search or content processing system come with some hefty costs. The license fee is, of course, the cost that the gullible seize upon. When you root around in the financial statements of publicly-traded companies in the search and retrieval business, you find that many are trying to follow in Verity’s pre-sell out footsteps. Specifically, vendors want to pump up consulting fees, making them carry the freight for earnings and growth. My recollection is foggy after seven consecutive days of travel, but Verity was generating more than half its revenues from non-license revenue. The number 65 percent pops in and out of my memory, but I’m going to have to dig through my files to verify this. As license revenues flat line (a common problem for some search vendors), cash can be generated by selling services. These are higher margin than a license fee with yearly maintenance fee add ons. Services can be open ended, and have a certain upside revenue charm for certain software vendors.
“Free” Search Systems: A Marketing Tactic
The idea is that you can install a working version of the program, get a sense of its basic features, and kick the tires. When we tested the “free” IBM – Yahoo Ominifind search system a few months ago, it worked quite well, but it had a document limit. My recollection is that most of the “free” systems have some type of governor on the system. The reason is that the “free” system is a way to qualify sales leads. When a user needs to process more content or perform some magic such as integrating the system into a third-party application, the vendor jumps with joy. A real sales lead has landed in her lap without booth duty, blogging, or hammer dialing.
Microsoft has jumped into the “free” fray with a beefed up search function for SharePoint. The SharePoint system has been in the forefront of the “knowledge management” revolution. The idea is that a Web-like interface makes it possible for a user to find, edit, share, and connect with colleagues, their documents, or related content. The word “portal” is sometimes used to describe this multi-function interface.
My sources tell me that SharePoint has more than 100 million users worldwide. This is a significant jump from the 65 million users I had learned in the fourth quarter of 2007. Microsoft SharePoint is on a roll. When we install a robust content management system designed to work in a Microsoft-centric environment, SharePoint is a required “server”. In fact, to make these high-end CMS systems function, we typically install SQLServer, Windows Server, and IIS (Internet Information Services), among others. I may be wrong in how I perceive this server conga line, however.
Microsoft Search Systems
In my analyses of SharePoint search in the first three editions of the Enterprise Search Report, I summarized these separate search systems for SharePoint.
- SharePoint search with a “blue” interface
- SharePoint search with a “green” interface
- SQLServer search
- Microsoft tool bar search
- Start button / Explorer search
- Microsoft’s http://search.live.com
Without repeating that 40-page analysis and tromping over the rights I assigned to CMSWatch.com, I can go into much detail about what each of these different search systems do. But what I can tell you is that there is not “one” search system available when you implement a SharePoint search.
What’s New?
The “free” system is Search Server 2008 Express. Express was rolled out last year and includes metatag functions so results can be sorted. You can also click on a colleague’s name and see documents written by that person. Keep in mind that SharePoint is not breaking new ground here. SharePoint is adding features that have been available from Certified Gold Partners like Coveo and Mondosoft, among others, for a couple of years. What’s new is that anyone will be able to download Express and give it a whirl. My understanding was that only certain customers would be able to experiment with the Express system. I don’t have a download link, which I think will be available in the near future. You can also download a version of Silverlight to hook visualization into search results. Again, this is a feature that has been available from such vendors as Inxight Software (now part of Business Objects and owned by SAP) for more than a decade.
Observations
I am intrigued with this “free” version of Express. When I look at it in terms of Autonomy, I see a counter to Autonomy’s UltraSeek solution. UltraSeek, developed when Steve Kirsch was at InfoSeek, is a useful system acquired when Autonomy gobbled up Verity in December 2006. Autonomy, according to my sources, has had some success upselling UltraSeek users to more robust search and retrieval solutions.
When I compare the different “flavors” of SharePoint search with offerings from Microsoft Certified Gold Partners, I am somewhat uncertain about the Microsoft approach. For example, Interse, a company with a modest profile in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, offers software that manipulates the metadata available in SharePoint repositories. Also, Fast Search & Transfer coded an adapter for SharePoint. With this code widget, a SharePoint customer could use the functionality supported by the Fast ESP (enterprise search platform). In addition, there are a number of companies offering enhancements to SharePoint.
The reason there are so many search, indexing, and content processing options for SharePoint boils down to two reasons in my opinion. First, Microsoft encouraged its partners to create these products. Second, the SharePoint search is not as easy to use for system administrators as it could be. (Forget “good” because most search and retrieval systems leave as many as two-thirds of their users griping.)
I will be interested to see how Microsoft handles the Certified Gold Partners who might feel a bit of competitive pressure. I’m also interested to see how the SharePoint platform will be mapped to the FAST enterprise search platform. (There are some areas of overlap and a few interesting technical issues to resolve.)
To wrap up, I urge you to download and install the Express search function. You are canny enough to know that you should check out these systems vendors as well:
- Coveo (Canada)
- Exalead (France)
- ISYS Search Software
- Mondosoft (now part of SurfRay in Denmark)
You can get a copy of Enterprise Search Report (now in its 4th edition) or place an order for my Beyond Search study, which will be available in April 2008).
SharePoint is a useful system, and it isn’t going to be displaced by a competitive system anytime soon. Keep in mind that it’s complex. You know behind-the-firewall search is complex. So “free” doesn’t mean with out cost. You will have to throw time, programmers, and effort at anyone’s “free” search system. That goes for anyone who offers a “free lunch” to you.
Stephen Arnold, March 3, 2008
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
