November 19, 2010 |
Predictions On Search Part 2 of 3 Search-Based Applications will become the primary way that Knowledge Workers interact with information and applications.
What is a Search-Based Application?
A Search-Based Application is a software application that has three primary characteristics:
- The application provides the worker with productivity driven primarily from search; connecting to multiple data repositories, relating the information and providing an interface that delivers information relevant to the user based on the task at hand.
- The application targets a specific business process or problem, such as e-Discovery or Compliance.
- Provides an interface in which the SBA will monitor what the user is doing and provide content that can be analyzed and acted upon without having to open multiple applications to get the job done.
Figure 2 - Example of a Search Based Application Figure 2 above provides an example of a Search-Based Application. The interface is obviously a radical departure from the standard 10 blue links that most Internet and Enterprise Search based tools provide today.
Why are SBA's only appearing on the scene now? There are a number of reasons why SBA's are starting to appear in organizations now. The first is that SBA's are built on top of search infrastructure. Only recently has there been a wide spread movement in organizations to deploy search platforms such as SharePoint or FAST. Companies have been much more focused on deploying other types of general productivity tools such as collaboration and communication technology. Price points have also been an issue with search technology. With the release of 2010 Microsoft has made huge strides in making search affordable to most organizations. Gartner predicts that by 2012, search will be pervasive in Global 2000 companies. So with search infrastructure in place, it's natural to begin to focus on the specific needs of departments and build out SBA's.
A third reason is that it is only recently that search vendors have the technology to support SBA's. On the backend, the search infrastructure must be able to securely connect into line of business systems. This requires and intimate understanding of ERP, CRM, ECM, Messaging, or custom application database schema, as well as the means to honor the security model of the target system. A short video on the complexities of connecting SharePoint or FAST to backend systems can be found here: Connecting to Enterprise Systems As mentioned above, SBA's require advanced user interfaces. This is an area finally coming of age and some search vendors are leading the way. BA Insight as just released an SBA called Document Assembly.
A short video presents the extent to which search interfaces have evolved. It can be found here: SBA Interface. How do I get started building Search Based Application? The first and most important question to ask is; have you deployed search infrastructure yet? If not, this where you start. This is not to say infrastructure must come first. Some organizations deploy SBA's first when search is core business. E-Commerce is a good example of this. But if this isn't the case, it makes sense to deploy search, then focus on a specific departmental needs. BA Insight recently hosted a great webcast with IDC and a leading law firm where they shared their experiences deploying a Search Based Application.
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