A Brief Overview of the Evolution of Enterprise Search

Before the availability of enterprise search capability, finding internal data was much like the internet before the advent of web search engines such as Yahoo and Google. Users were required to know where content was stored, and then manually type in those exact locations. This is still common in some environments – users may have designated file shares, for example, where particular items are stored.  With enterprise search capability, basic searches can be made of documents from a centralized location, typically an internal search page.

 

As users begin to search for items, they noticed that data appeared to be missing. How about the ability to search email? How about searching the data of an in-house application or proprietary database? From a user perspective, having access to all of the information from disparate sources was important. However, from a technical perspective, those sources do not automatically become searchable, there has to be a link between the content source, such as email, and the search appliance. Once diverse content sources are linked together and made available to a search appliance, issues other than data normalization spring up such as security, unstructured data management, etc.

 

Once users begin to retrieve information from other content sources besides web pages, there are several needs that arise that lead to the requirement for the search engine to be more intelligent. One example of search appliance "intelligence" is the ability to use more sophisticated searching logic such as automated taxonomy and content classification. Search appliance features such as searching for keywords only within emails, as opposed to other content sources would be another example.  The ability to search more and more diverse content sources drives the requirement to format the results in a more useful manner.  In general, some of the advanced search features of the internet search engines will trickle to the enterprise search space, such as results tailored to the user – applying enterprise security rules is one facet of that trend. Other features will arise in the enterprise search space, and may trickle back into the internet search engines.

 

 

Enterprise Data Fusion, Inc. has developed the eFusion technology to meet the above described needs of the constantly evolving enterprise search industry. The eFusion product is a unique, modular solution that allows clients to connect various search appliances to various content sources.   Its key competitive differentiator is the ease with which a client can set up and deploy a search appliance to work with a data source. Rather than needing to write custom code or spend weeks working with unsupported open source code to install a content connector, the eFusion product allows the client to use the user interface and the connector wizard to quickly and easily connect the appliance to the content source. This product was conceived to fill the "connector library" niche in the search appliance industry as most search appliances do not ship with pre-configured connectors in their standard product. Not only does this product fill the need of the client for easy and fast configurability for the connectors, this product also fills the ongoing need of the client for tested and continually upgraded robust connectors as the content source providers and search appliance companies upgrade their products.



Business integration software Search appliance features such as searching for keywords only within emails, as opposed to other content sources would be another example. For more Informations Please visit our www.edatafusion.com website.