Professional Microsoft® Search: FAST Search, SharePoint® Search, and Search Server

Chapter 1. What Is Enterprise Search?

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Defining Enterprise Search, and how it differs from Internet search portals

• Giving an overview of Enterprise Search architecture and the Microsoft Search lineup

• Characterizing the use of search within an organization.

• Exploring Search ROI and SCOE

• Answering common questions about Enterprise Search

Many people assume that "Enterprise Search" refers to search behind a corporate firewall. Although it certainly includes that, in this book we'll use a broader definition and consider Enterprise Search to be the search technology that your organization owns and controls, as opposed to the giant Internet search portals like Yahoo!, Google, or MSN/Bing.

This broad definition allows us to include and cover other search systems that power customer-facing applications and web properties that the company itself owns and controls. Such applications could include the search on a company's website home page and Tech Support area, or eCommerce shopping sites, which are also heavy users of search.

Organizations have different business objectives, and they implement search to help achieve those goals. As you'll see, Microsoft offers a wide range of products to power internal and customer-facing applications. But if you add up all the things that different organizations use search for, you come up with a pretty long list! Over the years, we've seen an amazing variety of ideas and projects, and about the only thing they have in common is being controlled ...