Search finds the corporate desktop

A new crop of search tools is targeting the enterprise desktop as the most effective home for information retrieval. As Microsoft prepares to bolster search capabilities in its forthcoming Longhorn OS, vendors such as Copernic, Groxis, and Open Road Technologies are today carving out the market for desktop search.

Early next year, Open Road plans to roll out Release 2.0 of its Watson Enterprise search tool, which integrates with desktop applications including Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and Adobe Acrobat.

The desktop is a valuable location for search technology, said Matthew Berk, research director at Jupiter Research.

“We spend all our time [on the desktop], which could lead to any number of opportunities to produce relevance,” Berk said.

Office 2003 contains many hooks into various types of search and research sources, and Microsoft plans to expand that effort by embedding search capabilities into the Longhorn file system.

Open Road’s Watson Enterprise is pushing the concept of “queryless” information access by removing the need for a search box.

When online, Watson can automatically read any document a user is writing, construct a dynamic query, and retrieve relevant information, said Kris Hammond, founder and chairman of Open Road.

“Users don’t have to query the system for an answer,” Hammond said.

Watson Enterprise includes application adapters that connect to APIs in desktop applications. It also leverages intelligent document analytics to understand user context and automated query generation to conduct proactive searches. Release 2.0 will add pervasive search capabilities, improved scalability, auto-install and training, and self-configuration.

Last week, Groxis shipped Grokker2, a desktop search tool that visually maps thousands of search results from multiple search engines and content sources, according to Groxis officials. Earlier this month, Copernic launched Copernic Meta, a meta search application that integrates with the Windows OS and Internet Explorer. The product lets users search multiple engines in less than a second directly from the Windows desktop bar.