Enterprise search is a peculiar beast

Internet and desktop searching today has made search in general appear effortless. For example, type "enterprise search" into the near omnipresent Google and the engine returns 231 million entries. "Britney Spears" returns 22.9 million; "global warming" 24.4 million; a graphic illustration that searching the Internet involves sifting through billions and billions of Web pages.

While considerably less daunting and on a smaller scale, desktop search is also no major challenge. It takes five minutes to install and deliver desktop search tools to tackle the thousands of documents and files stored on PCs.

Somewhere in the middle, enterprise search is a different beast with vastly different challenges. It faces security, location, data format, volume and bandwidth complexities that make Internet and desktop search pale in comparison.

Worse yet, it is often approached as if the organisation were the Web or desktop and its particular complexities are not sufficiently addressed, if at all. The enterprise is the chasm between the desktop and the Internet, not the step between the two.

Searching the Internet is relatively easy. The fact that all Web sites deliver content using a consistent delivery protocol enables Google, Yahoo and the newly-released Microsoft Live Search to index millions of Web sites and URLs with relative ease. In short, if the information is not protected by a digital lock and key, it can be indexed and exposed to any search. The difficulty in searching the Internet is finding the right search terms to narrow the returned results as much as possible, once the search engine has done its own prioritisation and ranking.

Desktop search indexes content across a variety of different systems (not only documents). Security is not a problem because the user has access to all the documents that should be exposed for indexing purposes. Users also find desktop search technology easy since they will already have seen the content as relevant.

To be truly effective, enterprise search requires a firm understanding of the business, its processes and needs.

Grant Hodgkinson, sales and marketing director, Mint Net

Simply applying Internet and desktop search to the enterprise ignores several serious issues: security, data location, bandwidth limitations and user capabilities.

Organisations contain a range of applications for every-day operation, including ERP systems, CRM platforms and other line-of-business applications to name a few. As a result, many businesses are characterised by silos of data, sometimes in a proprietary format with custom-built security. Adhering to security protocols and ensuring all the company's information is indexed and accessible, regardless of its location, impacts how all this data is exposed to the search process.

Not everyone in the organisation has rights to see all information. Equally so, the information extracted during search is of little value if not presented in a logical format in accordance with the user's role. For example: someone in the accounts department would not necessarily want to know when last a customer received a courtesy call but they would be concerned with outstanding payments and contact details. Someone in the sales department would, however, be interested in that courtesy call information. Search results without context relevant to the user are meaningless.

A third issue that complicates enterprise search is expensive and constrained bandwidth in SA. When indexing information, a link is established with the content in its repository. When the search index is updated, certain systems send the request to all data stores in the organisation and pull the relevant information back over the network. If not used correctly, this is an expensive use of precious bandwidth. Organisations want value from an enterprise search engine, but without incurring additional costs.

Finally, enterprise search must cater to organisations filled with super-users, who are at the very least technologically proficient, and those that are intimidated by technology. How can searching be made easier for that range of users? How relevant are results? For example, the organisation can best get information to its users by pre-populating search results and feeding it to them through click-back interfaces.

To be truly effective, enterprise search requires a firm understanding of the business, its processes and needs. Simply implementing a plug-and-play system will fall well short of expectations and most certainly will not provide the organisation with any sustainable search capability.

Enterprise search is most effective when it is moulded to the organisation. This is only possible with consulting and planning, and a mutually beneficial partnership with the chosen enterprise search specialist.