In a new Ovum report, 'Enterprise Search and Retrieval Exploiting all of the organisation's information assets', the technology analyst firm states open source software is ready for the enterprise and is able to deliver on the needs of most organisations.
Mike Davis, Ovum analyst and author of the report, says: “Free-to-use open source enterprise search and retrieval (ESR) solutions are now ready for the enterprise.”
He says Ovum believes enterprises should start with open source options when looking for a search solution and only go to the big players if open source is unable to deliver what they need.
“This shouldn't be an issue, however, as there is now a range of mature open source products which have functionality that is sufficient for most organisational needs.”
In 2010 it was estimated that the amount of digital information created, captured and replicated is approaching 985 exabytes - or 985 billion gigabytes.
“ESR solutions allow enterprises to search the rapidly increasing volumes of data both within their organisation and out, to allow them to make better decisions more quickly,” the research points out.
Ovum has analysed the ESR market and found that while software from leading player Autonomy came out on top, there is hardly any difference in the capabilities of all of the top six commercial providers.
The firm found that Apache Software Foundation's open source Solr 1.4 software is a credible competitor to commercial solutions in terms of features and functionality.
According to Ovum, Autonomy's IDOL platform has consistently achieved the greatest share of mind in the enterprise search arena but in terms of the capabilities on offer, there are mere nuances between those ranked.
“The key message for enterprises is that they should be aware that there is a raft of available products, including credible open source options, and not just look at the 'usual suspects'.”
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