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IBM Adds Entry Level Search and Content Integration Engines

Posted on: Monday, 10 July 2006, 06:00 CDT

Seeking to bolster its challenge at the low end, IBM Corp is adding downsized versions of its enterprise search and content integration engines to appeal to the high end of the SMB market.

The products, IBM WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Starter Edition and WebSphere Information Integrator Content Starter Edition, come with starting prices around $30,000. That's roughly half of their enterprise counterparts.

They are actually the same software, with the difference that they are limited to two CPUs and, in the case of the content integrator, limited to linking two content management systems. And, with a license change, they could be expanded to the scalability of the full enterprise edition.

In the case of enterprise search, IBM is clearly a challenger to Autonomy (which acquired Verity) and FAST. Like Oracle and others, IBM acquired its way into enterprises search with the 2004 addition of Venetica.

By adding an entry level, IBM is trying to compete more with the likes of Google Search Appliance, which has visibility and well-known search algorithms, but lacks many of the native connectors to back end systems.

The other piece of the announcement provides an integration link between content management systems. It enables users to access content as if it came from one system, a requirement for organizations that have just been through M&A and need to mesh unstructured data coming from two separate content management systems.

In both cases, the offerings are aimed at midsized enterprises of 2500 10,000 staff, and will be sold direct or through IBM partners. Both are available now.

Source: Datamonitor

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