Azure Search Enterprise Search Software Comparison
Comparing Azure Search and SharePoint Online Search
Power Cognitive Search Applications and Intelligent Intranets
If you are evaluating and comparing enterprise search software, you should consider Azure. Microsoft describes it as a facility for developers to build embedded web and mobile search applications, but in reality, the facilities in Azure Search make it a great core enterprise search platform. Here is a comparison with SharePoint:
Azure Search | SharePoint Online Search | |
Advanced Matching Power |
||
Result Counts | Exact | Approximate |
Geosearch | Y | N |
Regular Expression Matching | Y | N |
Complex Data Types | Y | N |
Fuzzy Search | Y | N |
Microsoft Graph Signals | N | Y |
Scale and Performance |
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Amount of External Content | Up to 1.4 billion items | 1-20 million items (depending on licensing) |
Maximum Document Size / Characters Indexed |
256 MB / 4 million characters |
64 MB / 2 million characters |
Query Latency | 100-400 ms | 300-1200 ms |
Indexing Latency | Minutes | Hours |
Extensibility |
||
Synonyms | Y | N |
Query Enhancement | Open | Sealed |
Content Enrichment | Open | Sealed |
Benefits of Azure Search
- Sophisticated search capabilities: including real-time indexing, geosearch, pattern search, and search on machine data.
- Managed Service: results in lower cost and less work by eliminating the need to deal with servers, software updates, backups, etc. If you are already using Azure, then you can quickly provision new indexes in your existing subscription and connect to your enterprise systems using Indexing Connectors over your current networking.
- High Degree of Control: including direct control of relevance ranking, query processing, and indexing.
- Scale-up: Azure search provides extreme scale and a pay-as-you-grow model. If you are hitting the limits of SharePoint Online search (such as files over 64MB or large amounts of data outside of Office 365), then you can use Azure search to supplement your existing search and present users with a single unified result set through SmartHub.
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