One of the paradoxes of the sector we work in is that enterprise search applications provide a way of finding information, and yet finding information on enterprise search applications is virtually impossible. Most of the vendors are either subsidiaries or divisions of larger companies, or are privately held and do not disclose basic financial information or any indication of their installed base. There is a very good section in the Digital Workplace Trends 2012 report on search and findability which shows a concerning lack of satisfaction with search, a theme echoed recently by Jed Cawthorne amongst many others.
By May this year we should know a lot more about the search business and search implementation practices as the result of a superb survey which has been developed by Kristian Norling and his colleagues at Findwise, with some help from a number of search managers and consultants around the world. The survey is now available for completion. It may take around 20 minutes to do so, but I would encourage you to spend the time no matter how small your search implementation. The web survey has good internal logic to take you from section to section. You may find yourself having to dig out information from others that perhaps you should have known already!
The top-level results will be presented at the Enterprise Search Summit, New York (for North America) and Enterprise Search Europe, London for Europe and the rest of the world. The full analysis will be available in due course, but it is going to take Findwise quite a while to dig beneath the surface of the results. This is a major investment of time from a small company that will be of global benefit to search vendors and search managers so do please recognise this investment by completing the survey. There are 6500 members of the Enterprise Search Engine Professionals LinkedIn Group so would it be too much to expect 1000 responses? Your response could make the difference between 999 and 1000 so please click today.
Thank you
Martin White