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 Microsoft today unveiled its Search Server Express 2008 software for the enterprise search market. The release, which is now available as a free preview download, was announced at today's Enterprise Search Summit West in San Jose, California. The search engine, based on Microsoft's existing SharePoint Server and SQL Server, will also be offered in a premium edition, Search Server 2008, supporting load balancing and high availability in a server farm environment, at a yet to be determined price. Some businesses now find employees who are better able to navigate traditional search engine site such as Google or Ask.com than they are using the enterprise search systems their company's count on to locate internal information. Both editions of the new Microsoft enterprise search product are expected to be released during the first half of 2008, and require either Windows Server 2003 or the upcoming Windows Server 2007. The new software packages are based around existing technology from SharePoint Server 2007 according to Jared Spataro, Microsoft's group product manager for enterprise search. The software can operate without a dedicated computer, although Microsoft recommends using one for optimum performance. Search Server 2008 gathers search results from a variety of sources, including Lotus Notes databases, Open Search standard compliant search engines such as Wikipedia, standard files shared through an office network, along with the ability to connect to Windows Live, Google, EMC²'s Documentum and IBM's FileNET. Search Server 2008 also takes advantage of Microsoft's Active Directory to ensure that private documents are not included among search results unless authorized. Competing with Google Mini Rob Gray, Microsoft's UK SharePoint product manager, sees Search Server 2008 comparing favorably to Google's Mini and Search Appliance hardware based systems. "You don't have to buy a piece of hardware; it's free; you don't have preset document limits, and we have a richer administration dashboard," Gray said in a recent article in The Register.  Google's Search Appliance costs roughly $30,000 and up, while its Google Mini can cost as little as $2,000. The Search Server Express 2008 software available for download today is a release candidate version, and aside from restrictions put in place limiting the installation to a single computer, the application contains all of the same features as the commercial product. Microsoft sees Search Server 2008 gaining a greater audience in part through having the free version taken for a test drive by those in the enterprise search market. "We hope it will help enterprise search move from kind of a sleepy town to more of a mainstream market," said Spataro, who also noted that by offering an enterprise search package more inexpensively than some competitors in the field, such as vendor Autonomy which sells a product that can cost upwards of $100,000, Microsoft's offering will appeal to many. "That's a lot for people who are just trying to get search into their environment," said Spataro. Additional competition comes from a joint effort produced last year by Yahoo and IBM, the free IBM Omnifind Yahoo Edition software. While pricing for the full version of Search Server 2008 has not been announced, Microsoft says competitive pricing is planned. Microsoft is targeting customers who currently operate enterprise class environments. "We are targeting IT professionals with this offering, which provides businesses with an interface to the existing systems they already have running," Spataro said in a recent eWeek article. Even current Office Sharepoint Server 2007 users could benefit from the new offering according to Spataro. "If an organization has deployed Office SharePoint Server 2007 as its enterprise search solution, it is unlikely that they would need Microsoft Search Server 2008. However, there may be situations where a SharePoint enterprise customer has a limited, perhaps departmental need for search, where Search Server 2008 Express could be a more rapid and lower-cost solution than adapting the SharePoint enterprise search feature set," he said. Information systems made by a number of companies will soon be searchable through Microsoft's Search Server 2008, including:  | Cognos | | | Open Text | | | EMC | | | Business Solutions | Microsoft Giving Away Enterprise Search Server 2008 Of the 6 million or so businesses operating in the United States, less than 1 percent use an enterprise search solution, according to Microsoft. Whether sales of Microsoft's two new Search Server 2008 products will help increase that number remains to be seen, as does their ability to compete with solutions such as the IBM Yahoo package. Related Links:
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10:33 pm on Nov. 6, 2007 (utc 0)