Universal Search

Would it not be great if your employees had one search box that provided access to all the information they need to do their jobs?  Think about how much time they would save and how much more effective they could be in their jobs with unified, secure access to everything from the employee phonebook to the ERP system and everything in between.  At Google, we think that all your business information should be searchable from one interface –just like on the web, while maintaining the security of the enterprise.

Your company's information is found in all types of formats, across a wide variety of information systems.  Whether unstructured information in the form of documents, presentations, and emails, or structured business data in ERP and CRM applications, the collective wisdom of your company lives in the digital fabric that is used on a daily basis. Providing users with access to that information through simple, powerful search is what the Google Search Appliance is all about.

A growing percentage of your company's collective wisdom is found in “unstructured”content –that resides in file systems, email messages, and on the desktops of your employees.  This unstructured information is the bread and butter of your enterprise.  All of your employees are creating valuable content that can be re-used by others.  But there is a big if –the true value of a piece of content can only be realised if it is easily accessible to others even if they did not know that that particular document exists. 

Your Corporate Network
Too often when people talk about search in the enterprise, their first thought is search across the intranet.  Search on the intranet is clearly important, but in most organisations, the official intranet only scratches the surface of the available information.  Valuable information resides in file shares, on web servers not linked to the intranet, in content and document management systems and the list goes on.  A true enterprise search engine must provide search across all this valuable content, securely from one search box.

The Google Search Appliance indexes over 220 different document formats –HTML, PDF, Microsoft Office suite and hundreds of others that most of us have never used!   The appliance can access content in file shares and web servers directly.  To get the most value out of your content, you must extend search to as broad a range of content as possible.  You never know when the market research project done by a product manager in London can benefit a sales manager in San Jose.  What you do know is that that market research report will only have value if others can re-use the knowledge contained in it.  

The Google Search Appliance can connect directly to these content and document management systems using the following mechanisms:

• Expose the content through an HTTP / HTTPS interface and enable the Google Search Appliance to crawl the content directly
• Directly index the underlying relational database containing the metadata and documents
• Use Google's content feed API to connect directly to the application
• Leverage Google's expanding partner and developer programme and use a pre-built connector

In addition to content and document management systems, the Google Search Appliance connects directly to Lotus Notes through the Domino interface and to Microsoft SharePoint.

The Desktop
Content shared across the company can have enormous value to an enterprise, but to really drive employee productivity, enabling easy access to content on an employee's local desktop is equally essential.  Companies should encourage employees to share content as much as possible and facilitate this sharing by making it as easy to ‘publish'content as it is to save it to their local or network drive.

Even as employees save more documents to the corporate network, there will always be a tremendous amount of information stored and saved on the “desktop”.  As hard drives continue to get larger and email and IM chats encompass more and more conversations, information overload will only increase.  For very small sets of information a flat or hierarchical file structure can be a satisfactory storage mechanism.  However, as you reach thousands or hundreds of thousands of documents and messages, search is the only technology that can consistently and efficiently bring back needed information.

There is nothing more frustrating than looking for a document that you created yourself but cannot remember where it is located.  That is why Google developed Google Desktop for Enterprise which provides search across all the files on your hard drive, all your email, web pages you have viewed and your IM chats.  Google Desktop provides sub-second access to all your personal information right from the familiar Google search interface.

Google Desktop for Enterprise is easy for an IT organisation to deploy across the organisation and configure to meet corporate security, retention and compliance standards. Any preference that is available to the user can be set and locked by IT, and additional enterprise settings regarding integration and document retention are controlled centrally using group policy. In this way Google Desktop for Enterprise can meet the requirements for virtually any organisation. When used in combination, Google Desktop for Enterprise, the Google Search Appliance, and Google.co.uk provide a universal search experience making ALL information accessible and useful to employees.

To learn more and download for free, please visit the Google Desktop for Enterprise section.

There is tremendous value in search across unstructured documents and data, but sometimes the answer or piece of information someone seeks is located in a cell in a database or requires a structured query in a business application.  To truly provide universal search across all of an organisation's information, we need to include structured data.

Business Applications
One of the largest challenges for the IT organisation is to manage the proliferation of information silos in the enterprise.  It's also challenging for the average employee who has to understand and be trained to use a wide variety of different systems.  Worse, even if the employee knows how to use the system, she may not know which system to use for a particular question.  Now imagine this employee has a customer on the phone asking a specific question and she has to look into 5 different systems to understand and attempt to answer the customer's question. 

Employees should have one interface that unifies all this information and that is why we created Google OneBox for Enterprise.  Modeled after OneBox searches on Google.co.uk –which enable you to enter flight times, stock tickers and addresses into Google.co.uk and receive targeted structured information right in the search results, Google OneBox for Enterprise provides the same fast, simple, and secure access to real-time information sources inside your company.  Google OneBox for Enterprise uses this same proven user-centric metaphor used by millions of people every day, to connect to business information systems like your contact database, CRM system, financial applications, ERP system, business intelligence system and any other system.

For example, a query of ‘east coast sales'would bring back a graph of sales from your business intelligence system.  Similarly, entering a purchase order number could bring back information from the company's financial application, and entering an employee name would bring back that individual's contact information and an up-to-date calendar of availability.  Google has partnered with some of the world’s leading software companies like Oracle, Cognos, SAS and many others to provide connectivity to key business systems.  Also, because Google OneBox for Enterprise is an open and published API, you can connect to any business application in use within your enterprise.

Learn more about the Google OneBox for Enterprise feature.

Databases
In addition to business applications, a significant amount of valuable corporate information lives in relational databases.  The Google Search Appliance can directly access content in IBM DB2, Microsoft SQLServer, MySQL, Oracle and Sybase relational database systems.  You have the ability to determine exactly what rows and columns are indexed and what information is displayed to the end-user.  In some cases, customers want to index and provide search over fields (say metadata fields) that they do not actually want to return to the user or vice versa.

The Google Search Appliance can also crawl files embedded in databases.  The flexibility of these features enables administrators to provide an integrated search engine across structured and unstructured content.

Employees have access to more content and are empowered to act and make decisions more than ever before.  At the same time, content is doubling on an annual basis, and more information is being saved and archived on the desktop and in the enterprise. To be successful on behalf of the company, these employees need talent and clear direction, but most importantly, they need the right information to drive their decision-making.  Without access to information, the risk of poor decisions and wasted time increases quickly.

To maximise productivity, your employees need:

• Photographic memory: the ability to find any piece of information they have seen no matter where it lives.
• Your company's collective wisdom: access to all your company's information to which they are privileged.
• Access to the world's information:  the most comprehensive index of information on the web.

By enabling access to information, you empower your employees to make smarter decisions and facilitate collaboration.  As businesses and industries continue to evolve more rapidly, organisations that are able to act on information quickly and efficiently will stay ahead of the game and achieve success.  An information architecture powered by Google's enterprise search products can drive effective information sharing and increase employee satisfaction. Now you have an answer, when your employees ask “why can't I just Google it?

Sign up for one of our seminars on the Google Search Appliance or the Google Mini to learn more how they can help you extract more value from your content.