All in the family

Verity has introduced a new family of business search products that provides unified results from multiple, simultaneous searches across targeted sources with a single query.

The company reports that a comprehensive study it conducted among CIOs, IT directors and search experts served as the building blocks for the Verity Search product family. The company learned that a consumer search offering frequently looks like a simple solution to a business' search needs, but Verity believes that simplicity creates more problems than it solves. The company explains that consumer search treats every user identically, deals with documents only and does not adhere to business policies.

So, at the core of Verity Search is the recognition that the business search user will require a mechanism that recognizes who they are, what they do and what information they need to make informed decisions fast. Verity says business search solutions must fulfill six requirements:

• be built for business with dedicated service and support readily available;
• be tunable for relevance based on business needs;
• search all relevant sources, from internal repositories to external Web servers and paid subscriptions;
• allow multiple ways to search for documents, databases and applications;
• conform with a business' security, privacy and audit standards; and
• provide unified results from multiple searches done simultaneously from a single query.

Verity Search draws distinctions with consumer search as well as traditional business search point products. It integrates enterprise desktop search (which will be generally available in November) with general business search and/or specialized search application platforms. Using the Verity Search family, a user can make a single query and have the desktop, e-mail, secure corporate repositories, the public Internet, intranet and subscription-based Web sites be searched and have the results displayed by user preference in a unified, meaningful way to each individual worker or job role, in a secure and compliant fashion.