Vivisimo Velocity ahead of search pack

12.09.2006
Choosing an enterprise search product is often fraught with compromise. If you, say, pick something with a simple search interface to appease users, administrators will likely be restricted in indexing databases or customizing results. From the start,

Vivisimo's Velocity hasn't asked organizations to make such concessions. Its search engine indexes content as is, so you don't have to preprocess or reformat documents. The content integrator allows users to perform simultaneous searches through diverse sources -- internal documents, intranets, Web, or syndicated news feeds. Last, the clustering engine organizes all these search results into categories intelligently made from words and phrases in the results, not some arbitrary popularity ranking.

Still, Version 5 has something new for both end-users and system managers, making it an even stronger search solution for Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies. To improve the user experience, Vivisimo added role-based search so that enterprises can target results, for example, to employees in sales or to human resources.

Yet Velocity 5's biggest changes are in the less visible underlying technology and administration. Topping the list are connectors for databases, Microsoft SharePoint portals, and EMC Documentum Docbases. Because these sources usually require authentication, Vivisimo Velocity 5 easily connects to LDAP or Active Directory servers and restricts viewing documents (or content sections) based on a user's rights. Moreover, administration is more straightforward compared with Version 4.5.

Gentlemen, start your engine

In approximately 30 minutes I'd installed Velocity 5 under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Vivisimo consolidated some of the management functions and reorganized parts of the Web administration interface, which compressed down to a few hours the process of creating my test scenarios -- searching an intranet, external Web sites, two SharePoint portals, and several Microsoft SQL databases. More elaborate customizations required a few days; Vivisimo also offers professional services and commits to completing most complex projects within 90 days.