The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Search, Q2 2008

Forrester evaluated enterprise search vendors against 147 criteria and found that Autonomy, Endeca, FAST (a Microsoft subsidiary), and Vivisimo lead the market with impressive technical capabilities and a diverse customer base pushing for further innovation. Over the past two years, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle have all recognized their potential advantage in the enterprise search market. Not only do they have deep financial resources to support their products, but they also can win customers who seek to natively connect and integrate search with existing IBM, Microsoft, or Oracle applications and content repositories. Yet these vendors are still digesting acquisitions and building search features that customers want now. Meanwhile, Recommind and InQuira deliver distinctive solutions for targeted market segments — legal and customer service, respectively—while Coveo is repositioning itself due to industry shakeups. Google competes effectively on ease of administration, low-cost/high-value appliances, and stellar brand. Search is a buyer's market, and I&KM pros must pragmatically align their requirements to get the best value and fit for their needs.