This is the title of a free 134pp report prepared for the Institute for Prospective Technology Studies of the European Commission by Pierre-Jean Benghozi and Cecile Chamaret. The Executive Summary states that the report looks at the demand and supply side of enterprise search, provides data about the market and presents an evolution of market dynamics over the last decade. The main sections of the report are entitled Enterprise Search Solution Repository, Enterprise Search Experience, Choosing a Solution - The User's Perspective, Trends, an Exalead Case Study and finally Strategic Analysis and Prospects. Three Appendices list the most influential providers, the most promising providers, very brief descriptions of the main search vendors and an analysis if the Gartner Magic Quadrant Methodology.

Pierre-Jean Benghozi is a distinguished economist and Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and Cecile Chamaret is a PhD student, and taking into account their unfamiliarity with enterprise search this report contains some interesting analysis. The approach is very much one based on an economist's perspective of market dynamics and industry structures, and reading between the lines this is a report commissioned by the European Commission to try to understand the competitive position of European search vendors and whether the indigenous industry might be under threat from acquistion. There are, for example, detailed analyses of Autonomy, Exalead and FAST, the three largest European vendors, two of which are no longer stand-alone companies. I do feel sorry for the authors as the Exalead purchase by Dassault occurred after they had written their report.

Although the report sets out to present the demand side of enterprise search there is no analysis of the factors that will have an impact on demand. Market sizes are given in gross revenues (which include service and support) and there are no estimates of the current installed base and the likely growth in this base. There is no discussion of search as an embedded product (for example in EDMS applications) and the impact on the market of both the Google GSA and Microsoft SharePoint is largely ignored. The low point is a table on p55 on the most important elements of enterprise search functionality segmented by industry sector and shows little understanding of either search functionality or industry requirements. Despite these and other shortcomings this is still a report worth downloading and reading as it is the first to try to look at the business of enterprise search. If only the authors had added someone with practical experience of selecting and using enterprise search into their team the value of the report could have been significantly enhanced.

Martin White
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