Enterprise Search

Enterprise search is different than internet search. Internet search is designed to crawl and index the contents of the web, where enterprise search is usually confined to searching the content held by a company. Enterprises can offer search to their external customers or to their internal employees.

The enterprise search market is a rapidly growing industry, with over 25% growth rates for the last few years.  The enterprise search market has revenues of over the $2.5 billion per year.  The market leaders include Autonomy, Fast Search and Transfer, and Coveo.  Autonomy has annual revenues of over $300 million.  Fast Search and Transfer had estimated revenues of over $200 million and was purchased last year by Microsoft for $1.2 billion.

Microsoft’s purchase of Fast shows a trend of some of the largest software and technology companies moving into the enterprise search market.  IBM, Oracle, and Google all have enterprise search divisions, but only Google has made substantial inroads in capturing market share.

The enterprise search products offered by these companies are mostly large software applications that can require months to customize, train and install the complex software.  They can sell for several hundred thousands of dollars to several million.  There is a strong vibrant industry of consultants who help companies determine the correct enterprise search solution for their needs and then help them with the installation and integration of the software.  The majority of the large enterprise search companies have global sales offices and resellers who contact companies through one-on-one sales calls.

Perfect Search offers both Enterprise Appliance Search and Enterprise Custom Search.