06:25 31.10.2005 | All news from "Internet"
IBM to use Google desktop search deep inside firms
IBM is linking up its OmniFind corporate search system withGoogle's free desktop search for business to make it easier forusers to locate information throughout an organization that isoften locked up in many separate systems.
"Getting these two products together makes sense for bothof us," David Girouard, general manager of Google's enterprisebusiness unit. "If you want to have a good corporate searchproduct, you have to have desktop search," he said.
In the collaboration, Google wins IBM's endorsement amongcorporate technical managers for its desktop search product andIBM gives corporate information workers an already popularentry point into back-office databases through Google's search.
Searchable data ranges from e-mail to computer files toblog postings to corporate repositories of data, images, audioor video. Much of this is not available using public Web searchtools. Typically, it is hard to reach inside a company exceptby trawling through many different programs.
"There is a lot of information that passively sits insidean enterprise," said Jon Prial, IBM's vice president of contentmanagement. "Our intention is to provide more of an activeservice that gives a single view of all that information."
No money is changing hands in this partnership by theworld's biggest computer company and the leader in Web search.
But coming just weeks after a software and research pact byGoogle and Sun Microsystems Inc., the IBM deal enlists yetanother potential ally as Google increasingly faces off withrival Microsoft Corp. on PC desktops.
Prial downplayed any grand strategy in IBM's dealings withGoogle, but said it was part of a broader push IBM calls"information as a service," which the computer company plans tomake more explicit over the coming months.
This move draws on 14 acquisitions IBM has made since 2001through which it is seeking to give corporate users a singleview of product or customer information or to find"non-obvious" ties between people or products.
NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK
Users of IBM's WebSphere integration software would haveaccess to information stored inside rival business databasesand content management systems, not just those from IBM.
"There's a lot of raw data inside an organization -- asmuch as 80 percent is unstructured and something has to happento make it into information," Forrester analyst Barry Murphysaid of data forgotten on employee hard disks or other places.
IBM customers can use the Google-IBM search combination bybuying IBM products and services and building their ownin-house system or rely on IBM to create a pre-packaged system,tailored to the company's industry, the company said.
Its first custom-built system, called IBM Crime InformationWarehouse, aims to give government and police agencies fastaccess to crime statistics, incident and arrest reports in asingle view that can help discern crime patterns, IBM said.
Mountain View, California-based Google eschews big, formalalliances with corporate technology suppliers like IBM. That'sbeen the traditional route less-established software suppliershave used to win corporate acceptance of their products.
Google's strategy is rather to use its popularity withconsumers at home to slip into offices by relying on theactions of millions of employees to each download its tools.
"Information technology used at work has been evolving muchmore slowly than among consumers," Girouard said. "We thinkthere is a great opportunity (for our consumer users) to bringproducts to the workplace that are Google-like," he said.
Google shares set a new record in Nasdaq trading on Friday,closing at $358.17, up about 1.5 percent. IBM shares closeddown about 1.1 percent at $81.42 on the .
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