Google on Wednesday began offering an upgraded version of its Search Appliance. The hardware targets enterprises and government agencies that want a Google-like Web search for office documents.
The upgraded Google Search Appliance searches up to 10 million documents. That’s the same document storage capacity as the previous version that was offered in a five-box rack. A larger, 12-box version can store, manage and search up to 30 million documents.
Searching for New Features
The latest appliance lets employees subscribe to e-mail alerts for topics and documents of interest, choosing an hourly, daily or weekly schedule. It offers a spell checker in six new languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch. Administrators can adjust search results for different user groups, based on department or function.
The upgrade offers native support for Kerberos, enabling a silent authentication experience for end users. Administrators can bias results based on metadata, in addition to biasing based on source, URL or date.
Administrators can also view and export daily and hourly result sets, top queries, and special feature usage, and generate a report for every query, including reports on which queries receive no clicks by a user and how often users are clicking on sponsored links in comparison to search results or OneBox modules.
Universal Search Capabilities
Google said its Search Appliance delivers fast, relevant and secure access to information by tapping into Google’s core search technology and optimizing it for business use. Once administrators install the appliance on the network, it lets staff search documents in a variety of document types, including IBM’s FileNet, Microsoft’s SharePoint, EMC’s Documentum, and Open Text’s LiveLink.
“The Google Search Appliance provides universal search across a variety of internal and external sources — including file shares, intranets, databases, applications, hosted services and content-management systems,” the company said. “The Google Search Appliance makes all…