As with the Internet world, search options abound for the enterprise, and compelling options abound, both for free and at a price Cuil claims to offer up to 120 billion Web pages of indexed material — more than Google, it asserts — and delivers results in a magazine-like format in columns, your choice of either two or three. A new format, new technology, and a black/sparse entry point, devoid of the blaring ads users loathe. We could have a contender here.[For more about Cuil, please read “Ex-Google employees launch Cuil.”]The online search news had me thinking about solutions for the business world. With a growing in-house library, perhaps you’ve wondered how your users locate and access the document resources within your organization. Perhaps for documents within their own system they use the search features installed with their operating system. Windows Vista delivers a quite impressive search tool, for example. With both Vista and XP, you can enhance your search abilities through a free download of Windows Search 4.0 — or with some other add-on search engine that you trust. But as an administrator, what do you to provide quality document-library search functionality to your users? One of the 2007 entries into the market from Microsoft was SharePoint Server for Search. Essentially, Microsoft took a slice of functionality out of MOSS (MS Office SharePoint Server) and created Standard and Enterprise Search editions. [For more about Microsoft’s search offerings, please read “Microsoft unveils enterprise search products.”]The Search server’s capabilities include search-indexing Web sites, SharePoint sites, Exchange Public Folders, Lotus Notes databases, and third-party document repositories; it also offers secure content access control. The only distinction between Enterprise and Standard is that the latter has a 500,000 document limit; Enterprise has no limit. If you already have the full MOSS version, you have these features included and more. Additional features include enhanced search center UI, search for people and expertise, a Business Data Catalog (BDC) and the ability to search structured data sources (depending on the version of MOSS you have). I took the time to install a SharePoint Server for Search just to see what it can do. The underlying base is SharePoint Services 3.0 (which is free to download and install from Microsoft) and it all installed pretty easily without any hiccups in the process. Go here for a full comparison between SharePoint Server for Search and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). Bear in mind that these services are not inexpensive. Enterprise Search Server costs nearly $60,000, for example. Although the MOSS and Search offerings are still available and current, Microsoft has moved on with offers like Search Server 2008 Express and Search Server 2008. From a feature comparison perspective, MOSS 2007 still wins out despite the lack of streamlined installation; it more than makes up for that with such features as People and Expertise Searching, Business Data Catalog, and SharePoint Productivity Infrastructure. You can see the full comparison chart here. Pricing is a factor only if there are competitive alternatives on the market with competing feature-sets. Are there? Well, what about the Google OneBox? Google says the “Google OneBox for Enterprise delivers relevant, real-time information from enterprise sources, such as CRM, ERP, and business intelligence systems, based on a user’s search query.” The company claims to offer secure access for all queries, from phone book listings to graphs of inventory levels and sales trends as well. The company also has a long list of partners, including Cisco, Cognos, and Salesforce.com. Beyond OneBox, Google offers alternatives, such as Google Mini. There are several versions with different pricing depending on the number of documents you wish to index and search (50K, 100K, 200K, or 300K). The lower-end mini comes in just under $3,000. However, if you are dealing with a more substantial document library structure, you may want to consider the Google Search Appliance, which can index millions of documents For more info, go here. In addition, IBM and Yahoo are partnered up in an enterprise search product called OmniFind — which apparently is free! It’s an enterprise search solution that offers support for up to 500,000 documents per server and more than 200 file types, and you can search in 30-plus languages with the actual product translated into fifteen. OmniFind Yahoo! Edition also uses the open source Apache Lucene indexing technology to provide cross-platform, full-text indexing. In addition, it is fully integrated with Yahoo Search. Learn more about its solution here. As our documentation libraries grow, so will our need to locate our information. The battle for the ultimate search solution is set to be waged. Who will be victorious both online and in-house? I’d like to know your opinion. Software DevelopmentSmall and Medium Business