Google Enterprise Search Teams Up with Ingram Micro
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Google is expanding the usage of its enterprise search solutions by teaming  up with Ingram Micro, one of the world&#8217;s largest technology products distributors. Google and Ingram Micro had sealed an international IT Distribution Agreement that would grant Ingram Micro the right to distribute Goolge Mini and Google Search Appliance. Google Mini is a search [...]
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Go faster stripes for enterprise accounts Microsoft has turned to Autonomy to inject structured and unstructured search capabilities into its SharePoint collaboration platform for large, mixed deployments.â¦
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Jumping into a new market, Google Inc. is unveiling a product today to compete with Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp. in the multibillion-dollar business of providing e-mail, calendar, and other tools on corporate computer desktops.
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(InfoWorld) - GoogleÂ has improved the security and search features of its Mini search device, a hardware box with Google software aimed at small and medium-size companies and at departments within large organizations. In its 2.2 version, slated for release on Tuesday, the Mini will gain some features already present in the company's Search Appliance, a similar product that is more sophisticated and powerful and designed for large organizations, said Kevin Gough, a Google enterprise product manager. Industry observers have been waiting for Google to give the Mini a boost, as a reaction to a serious challenger the product got in December whenÂ IBM and Yahoo launchedÂ a free, entry-level, enterprise search application. That competing product, called IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition, can index up to 500,000 documents. The Mini starts at $1,995 for 50,000 documents and tops out at 300,000 documents in its $8,995 edition. In terms of security, the Mini will for the first time recognize access settings for users and documents that an administrator has pre-established in Windows' NTLM (NT LAN Manager) authentication protocol and Active Directory. The Mini has also gained the ability to apply access settings and authentication requirements defined by administrators in LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directories and in HTTP Basic schemes for online transactions. Meanwhile, a major search improvement is the OneBox feature, which lets the engine identify the intent of certain queries and compile and present a digest of data at the top of the search results list that may answer the user's questions, saving them from having to click on search results. OneBox can be configured to compile human resources data, sales transaction details and employee contact and calendar information, for example. The upgraded Mini now integrates with Google's hosted Analytics service that tracks and logs Web site usage. In particular, the Mini integration will enhance and enrich the data Analytics gathers related to users' search activities. In a similar fashion, the Mini has been linked with Google's Sitemaps service, which lets webmasters put a file on their sites that tells Google's automated Web crawler the proper way to index their sites' Web pages. The Mini 2.2 gives administrators the option of creating or improving their Web sites' site maps. Finally, the Mini has gained the ability to limit search queries based on ranges of numbers, such as dates or prices. While the security features are a must-have in corporate search tools, and thus a catch-up move for the Mini, the integration with Google Analytics gives it an edge over competing products, said Guy Creese, an analyst with Burton Group. Companies of all sizes are eager to improve their understanding of what their clients do on their Web sites, and gaining a better insight into clients' search activities is extremely valuable, he said. The language in search queries provides more concrete clues about a client's intentions and desires than the recording of the client's mouse clicks on the site, Creese said.
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Taking aim at Microsoft, Google plans to offer a package of software for business users.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft and IBM executives Wednesday admitted feeling heat from Google now that the Web search giant is trying to make inroads into the enterprise market with its hosted suite of communication and collaboration tools. Google Apps, a hosted service, is gaining traction primarily in universities but is a welcome addition to enterprise software because of its simplicity and ease of use, said Rob Curry, director of Microsoft's Office business platform group, during a panel discussion today at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. "We actually see [Google] as a great competitor in this space," Curry said. "And they bring a good spirit in terms of simplicity, ease of use and things we're trying to leverage as we go forward in our development cycle." Google Apps was described as a "direct shot at Microsoft Office" by Forrester Analyst Erica Driver when Google released an enterprise version of the tool in February. For US$50 per user per year, customers get e-mail, instant messaging, a calendar tool, a Web page creator, support for e-mail on BlackBerry mobile devices and integration with Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Analysts say Google Apps offers less functionality than Office but is less expensive. IBM, which offers the Lotus Notes set of e-mail, calendaring and collaborative applications, and Lotus Sametime, an IM and Web conferencing tool, has partnered with Google but still sees the company as a potential competitor. Lotus Sametime allows IM customers to communicate with users of Google Talk. "We're a key partner of Google's," said Ken Bisconti, vice president of messaging and collaboration software for IBM, during the panel discussion. "We partner with them, and continue to partner with them, hopefully for the good of our customers. I also fully expect them to become a competitor to us in the business space." Google executives are busy trying to understand the requirements of enterprises, a learning process that will be crucial if the search company hopes to gain market traction for Google Apps outside of academia, Bisconti said. "Most of our customers tell us they're talking to the Google enterprise team," he said. "Google is doing a good job of collecting information to understand enterprise requirements. ... I don't see them as a near-term competitor but as a long-term potential substitution." No Google officials participated in the panel. The session, titled "Vendor Spotlight: Assessing IBM & Microsoft Platforms for Collaboration & Unified Communications," also gave the vendors a chance to discuss the broad trend in which employees expect the types of instant communication available to them in their personal lives. This is placing increased important on IM, Web conferencing, video and audio conferencing, and mobile communications. "The role of instant messaging has completely transformed and it has become a business expectation," said Akiba Saeedi, IBM's program director for unified communications and collaboration products. Years ago, people questioned whether e-mail would become a necessary business function. No one would question e-mail's importance today, and IM seems to be heading in a similar direction, Saeedi said. Bisconti cautioned against getting caught up in industry buzzwords such asÂ "enterprise 2.0," but said the desire for collaborative technology in general is real and has created a huge business opportunity for software vendors. "I have never seen so much senior-level interest in companies in improving the way they communicate, collaborate and improve the speed and agility of their business," he said.
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Software giant makes bid in an attempt to challenge growing might of Google
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(InfoWorld) - Ingram Micro will distribute Google's Search Appliance and Google Mini enterprise search devices, a deal intended to accelerate sales of the products, the companies announced Wednesday. Google, which has sold about 9,000 of the devices to date, expects the distribution deal with Ingram to boost sales in particular among SMBs. Ingram, with its distribution network of more than 165,000 retailers and resellers worldwide, is also expected to help increase sales internationally as well as in the government and education sectors. "The only way to meet the growing demand for the products is to go through channels," said Rodrigo Vaca, channel marketing manager of the Google Enterprise unit. Vaca declined to provide details of the effect Google hopes the deal will have on sales. "We expect this to have a significant impact," he said. Google already has deals in place with regional distributors in Japan, Australia, and parts of Latin Americaand expects the Ingram relationship to be complementary to those arrangements, Vaca said. The Ingram deal will initially focus on the U.S. and will expand to other regions like Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific later this year, he said. So far, Google has sold the products almost exclusively via its own direct sales staff in the U.S. and Europe. "Our strategy is to have our direct sales force work hand-in-hand with the channel," he said. As part of the agreement, Ingram will provide sales assistance, marketing resources, credit help, and technical support to the resellers that carry the Google products. The Ingram deal isn't exclusive, Vaca said. In a news release, Ingram, which distributes hundreds of thousands of IT products from about 1,400 suppliers, said the deal strengthens the menu of wares it can offer to its channel partners. The Search Appliance and Google Mini are server-side hardware devices loaded with Google's search engine software designed to let companies index and find information stored on corporate servers. Although Google generates most of its revenue from search engine advertising in the consumer market, company officials have said they are committed to its Enterprise unit, which, in addition to the search devices, also markets business software. The Google Mini, designed for SMBs or departments within large organizations, starts at $1,995 with a capacity to index 50,000 documents. It tops out at 300,000 documents. The Search Appliance, which is more powerful and has more features, starts at $30,000 with a 500,000-document capacity and tops out at 30 million documents. The Google products typically cost less than more sophisticated enterprise search products and are designed to be easier to install, manage, and use. However, analysts generally agree that the Google products don't match the feature set of high-end enterprise search products from companies like Autonomy and Fast Search & Transfer.
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Ingram Micro will sell the Google Search Appliance and Google Mini to the education and government sectors, as well as to small and midsize businesses.
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Take that, Google While Google seeks to encroach on enterprise rivals with its SaS (Software as a Service) offerings such as Google Office, it needs to watch its rear.â¦
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Search company Google begins the global roll-out of an enterprise search tool that allows companies to "google" their own networks.
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Google today unveiled improvements to its enterprise Search Appliance and began shipping a scaled-down version of the tool, called Google Mini, for small and medium-size businesses.
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In the last couple of months, we have seen Google invading the Microsoft territory with GMail and Google Desktop Search. Now Microsoft is responding.
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Google on Thursday confirmed a long-rumored deal that will bundle some of its software on Dell Inc.&#039;s personal computers, providing the online search engine leader with another potentially potent weapon in its fierce rivalry with Microsoft Corp.
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IBM Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are teaming up to offer a free data-search tool for businesses, a quirky move challenging Google Inc. and other corporate-search specialists in a blossoming market.
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Google has finally announced Google Desktop Search, a search application that enables users to search their email, files, web history, and chats.
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(InfoWorld) - SAP AG unwrapped its Enterprise Search application to help customers conduct specific secure queries of structured and unstructured data held in both SAP and non-SAP software. The vendor announced the search application Tuesday at its TechEd developer conference in Las Vegas during a flurry of announcements promoting innovation and simplicity. "We can do deep searches into enterprise data," Peter Graf, executive vice president of solution marketing for SAP, said during a conference call to discuss the news. "We can leverage all the knowledge we have about a user from [SAP] applications in terms of their preferences, roles and authorization for what information they can see." For instance, an individual within a company could carry out queries around the organization's corporate structure as to who reports to whom or determine which of their peers are experts in technologies like Java, he added. The aim is to make enterprise search tied to business context accessible to nontechnical users for a "Google-like" searching capability, according to Graf. "You don't need a very long learning experience to use Enterprise Search," he said. Formerly known as Project Argo, the application runs on SAP's NetWeaver 2004s integration platform. The underlying indexing engine is SAP's existing Trex search technology combined with newly developed search capabilities. SAP developers can download a free trial version of Enterprise Search now from the company'sÂ SAP Developer Network (SDN) Web site. The company plans to make the application commercially available in 2007, at which point SAP will release pricing details. Developers will be able to adjust Enterprise Search so they can use the application to search non-SAP applications, Graf said. They will also be able to embed search capabilities in other applications and create new search services. Enterprise Search has open interfaces so it can hook into third-party information sources and search engines. SAP plans for Enterprise Search to support a number of different user interfaces. The vendor will make the application available as a browser-based user interface for simple Web search and as a desktop widget embedded in its mySAP ERP 2005 enterprise resource planning application. SAP also intends to offer Enterprise Search as an enhancement to its Business Intelligence Accelerator (BIA) product. Graf stressed that Enterprise Search and BIA are complementary technologies, both using in-memory capabilities and being highly scalable.Â SAP released its BIA analytical engine in May after working closely with Intel Corp., IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. The software enables users to quickly analyze and query vast amounts of business data on the fly without having to pre-aggregate and store the information in a database before querying it. SAP pre-installs BIA on blade servers from HP and IBM. Shai Agassi, president of SAP's product and technology group, described BIA as a "mini-grid and a mini-Google." SAP's main applications rival Oracle Corp. debuted aÂ stand-alone enterprise search product, Oracle Search Enterprise 10g, in March. Other applications players are also looking more seriously at the enterprise search market, including Microsoft Corp. with its Index Server software. Â