Microsoft has announced its first products for the lower end of the enterprise search market, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.
Although Microsoft already has enterprise search functionality built into SharePoint Server 2007, that product is a fully-fledged software portal targeted at the higher end of the corporate market. Microsoft claims that the standalone Search Server product will be easier to install and administer.
Search Server 2008 Express will be free to download and use, with no imposed limitations on the number of documents that can be indexed, while the paid-for version of the product -- the price is yet to be announced — will allow users to install it in a load-balanced environment alongside other search engines if required.
"Information workers waste as much as 9.5 hours each week on searches that don't turn up the right information, which can add up to millions of dollars in lost productivity every year," said Rob Gray, Microsoft's UK SharePoint product manager, on Tuesday. "We believe there is a core set of enterprise search features that every business should have, and we're delivering them for free in Search Server 2008 Express."
Search Server 2008 is based on the OpenSearch standard — created by Amazon.com and used by applications like Wikipedia, Internet Explorer and Firefox -- that allows various search engines to interoperate and enable federated search results.
Gray told ZDNet.co.uk on Monday that the lack of preset document limits -- as opposed to the limits imposed by Google for its search appliances -- would prove attractive to buyers, as would the unified dashboard that comes with Search Server 2008.
Free connectors are also to be made available in early 2008 to allow content to be indexed from EMC's Documentum and IBM's FileNet enterprise content management platforms.
Microsoft Search Server 2008 will be able to run on Windows Server 2003. Both Search Server 2008 and its free version will be available in full in the first half of next year -- around the time that Windows Server 2008 becomes available -- although the first release candidate is available now for free on Microsoft servers.
Microsoft recently announced its decision to decouple Windows SharePoint Services from Windows Server 2008, leading to much speculation over new SharePoint-based products that may become available.
