Moving from Search to Business Search

Search is no longer Sexy. Is that sad?

When I used to say in social events that I work in search, people would be excited. Thank you Google I guess. Now if I say that same thing, they are bored and feel sorry... Should I thank Microsoft?

Enterprise Search Summit last week in May in New-York was very interesting in that respect. It was both boring and thrilling. Our industry is transforming itself.

Search for search is a technology, there seem to be a few good enough products out there, at least if you put the service effort that's needed. And it's true, if you want to do a search on enterprise contents, many vendors can help you. And so does Microsoft now. So it's a commodity, right?

Actually it is a little bit more complex. Because customers do not need search, nor do they want to pay for search. They want to solve information access problems, ideally directly related with business performance or risk related issues. And they start to understand that only Search Based Applications can help them achieve this objective.

So we are in for a brand new game. Because Search Based Application means a lot more functionalities and integration to provide, specific relevancy requirements that will have mission critical impact, business organized facet navigation, real time absolutely vital needs, and much much more... There, very few technologies can handle the challenge, and that's good news for Sinequa.

This is the begining of a new era for this industry. At last, we are going to see the tremendous value of search even if we stop talking about search. Search Based Applications will make the difference for customer relation, enterprise reactivity and efficiency, supply chain management, etc...

Special thanks and congratulations to Leslie Owens, Sue Feldman and Lynda Moulton for their insightful presentations in New-York.