Google and, to some extent, its rival Yahoo Inc. are, of course, the search engines dominating the news. Business sections track Google's stock fluctuations, and the February congressional hearings on its China operations were front-page material.

"Google has created a lot of visibility around search on the consumer side," says Matthew Brown, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. "Companies are very excited about that and see that search can be a mission-critical application for the enterprise."

But what works well in Internet search doesn't always meet enterprise needs. So although Google does offer enterprise search appliances and just released two new low-cost versions in January, it's not necessarily where the news lies in terms of cutting-edge technology.

"In the basic information-retrieval area, Google is being very disruptive," says Brown. "It has come in at a very compelling price point, but they are not a product leader and are not differentiating themselves in terms of features and functionality."

Brown breaks down search into three main categories. There is the traditional function of simply locating and retrieving documents. Next comes the ability to do a deeper analysis of the data to locate patterns and trends, and to meet specific needs for business intelligence, regulatory compliance, discovery in legal cases or other areas. Finally, there is real-time monitoring and analysis of data, particularly for security and financial applications.