January 10, 2007, 9:41 AM — Listen to the column Search from IBM and Yahoo, or visit our Podcast Center to hear more by James Gaskin.
IBM rarely tells large companies to "help yourself to our free stuff" but that's what they said with their new IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition. One might argue that this is a ploy to distract customers from the Google Search appliance with a repackaged Open Source search program that hasn't set any sales records as part of the WebSphere family, but that sounds so cynical early in a new year.
With a search capacity limited to 500,000 documents, OmniFind really competes with the Google Mini Search appliance. Although the software is free, the cost of annual support from IBM ($1,999) is the same as the cost of the Google Mini appliance (what a coincidence). Dig a little deeper, and you find out that the software is based on Lucene from Apache (http://lucene.apache.org/) and you get the idea you can get it from Apache for free as well, although the interface will be different.
I'm all for IBM giving away free software to encourage you to upgrade to their OmniFind Enterprise edition. I'm all for Yahoo getting involved to leverage their Web search component. I'm not sure if "free" and "enterprise" work well together, so I asked a competitor in this space, Isys Search Software (http://www.isys-search.com/).
VP of Marketing Dave Hauke says "We're glad IBM and Yahoo are putting the spotlight on enterprise search, because a rising tide lifts all boats." Three years ago when Google introduced their search appliances, Isys' growth jumped into double digits.
Unlike IBM/Yahoo, Isys licenses their software by seat, not document count, so they can go from a desktop product to a full enterprise product with the same look and feel. Sometimes document counts get skewed by databases counting each record as a document, meaning your half a million documents don't go as far as you think. That's why Isys charges by the seat, but they're flexible and will make you a deal for Web search engines with thousands of users and other unusual situations.
With billions in their bank account and a golden brand name, Google throws the longest shadow in the enterprise search market. IBM/Yahoo will help get more companies interested as well. And Isys' Hauke says, "when we get into the sales selection mix, we do pretty well." Sounds like IBM/Yahoo should help everyone search for a better search solution.
