Five years of evolution in enterprise search

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager for Search, Google Enterprise

Today we announced the release of Google Search Appliance version 5.0. We're not often big on version numbers, but for us and our customers who need to find information throughout their enterprise, that "5.0" means something. Among other things, it represents five years of experience tackling the challenges of search for businesses. With the Google Search Appliance we've taken much of what we've learned about serving results efficiently and at scale to millions of users worldwide and brought it to the enterprise.

And we went further. We added enterprise-grade security to ensure users only see the content to which they have access. We also gave more control over system set-up and administration without sacrificing the relevance and ease of use you expect from Google. Along with more control, we extended the reach even deeper into the enterprise. Users will now be able to search for data residing across the numerous siloed content repositories that have become commonplace in large businesses, including EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, OpenText Livelink, and Microsoft Sharepoint, through the same easy to use interface, in the same intuitive way.

Version 5.0 also represents a wealth of innovation potential. So we've also launched Google Enterprise Labs as a way to share some of what we're continuing to explore. With Do-it-Yourself KeyMatch, for example, users can promote results they feel should appear at the top of the page. We recognize that institutional knowledge not only resides in documents, but in people. We use Do-it-Yourself KeyMatch inside Google -- an experiment that's both social and technical. And the results, so to speak, have been great.

Finally, 5.0 represents what we hope for the future in enterprise search, which means both more (in terms of reach and relevance) and less (in terms cost, administrative overhead and wasted time). It's a perfect balance we will continue to pursue.