Forrester evaluated leading enterprise search platform vendors across approximately 150 criteria and found that Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) and Autonomy established early enterprise search category leadership; thanks to their extensive search capabilities, broad platform focus, and signify cant market presence. Endeca Technologies is also a leader in this space with its mature search management tooling and increased focus on offering search as a platform. Google, IBM, and Microsoft are all strong performers but lack the breadth of capabilities and focus to be considered more broadly as search platforms. Entopia came in as a strong performer with its good support for basic search scenarios, particularly in collaboration environments. Convera, a previous leader in enterprise search, appears to be exiting this market altogether, with declining market share and an ill-defined future strategy.
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Search Platforms, Q2 2006
Microsoft surely has a way to go when it comes to Enterprise Search. Some of the incumbants are very strong players. The current position according to Forrester looks very promising I must say …
Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 search compares poorly in all categories against other enterprise search products. The current offering lacks even basic search capabilities like spelling correction, white-bar Boolean commands, and word-root stemming for expanding queries. As a result, most companies’ employees either don’t bother to use SharePoint search or rely on third-party search engines for searching SharePoint content. Indeed, Microsoft itself makes extensive use of independent products from Coveo Solutions, Mondosoft, ISYS Search Software, and others to extend SharePoint capabilities. But the next wave of enhancements shows real promise. Microsoft will standardize on a common search architecture across all of its products, including SharePoint Server 2007, Office Tools, and Outlook, in the fall of 2006 and will embed a search index within the Vista operating system. We’ll likely see some real improvements to search within Microsoft applications relative to previous versions, but, in the near term, plan to augment SharePoint Portal 2003 with a third-party product to improve search quality.
Microsoft Is A Strong Performer In Enterprise Search Platforms
