Tuesday, May 17th

What is common practice for search and metadata? How can you determine where your practices fall short and where they exceed the norm? To help you benchmark your own organization, this session presents a “metadata maturity model.” The model looks at search and metadata handling within an organization, including metadata and taxonomy standards, tools and tool selection, staff hiring and training, data creation and QA, project management, and executive support. Within each of those areas, specific practices are called out that indicate if an organization’s handling of search and metadata is at a beginning, intermediate, or advanced level.

Comparing industrial-strength search engines and their advanced features is difficult unless you can see them in action. During Enterprise Search Summit, the Enterprise Search Clinics will present brief tutorials and demos of important enterprise search engines and tools given by product experts from the sponsoring companies. Attendees will gain a basic understanding of how each works and how each one differs. 

Listen as this panel of experts shares their comments and insights about these case studies on implementing search using two very different search tools. Get their advice on lessons you can take away from the experiences at MITRE and Johnson & Johnson. 

The implementation of enterprise search is an ongoing activity that must constantly balance evolving user needs, business requirements, and technical capabilities. Where and how do you start? The decision about which search software to add to your intranet, an enterprise portal, or how to find relevant information across different information repositories is increasingly complex as new products and capabilities come on-stream. Valentin Richter will describe key issues for comparing and evaluating enterprise search products, including features, architecture, integration with existing IT infrastructures, and management. Based on hands-on experience with multiple leading search vendors, he will illustrate the decision process and show how these vendor products compare in real-world projects. 

Learn about the strengths and weaknesses of various search engine solutions and their suitability for different uses, and get a profile of the confusing and rapidly changing search engine landscape, based on Steve Arnold’s recent critical study of enterprise search systems. Arnold will identify best-of-breed search solutions and outline a practical list of product selection checkpoints for large and small organizations.