Exploring the Future of Enterprise Search

An Expert Workshop & Think-Tank Event

13-14 October 2011, Seville (Spain)

Overview:

The aim of this workshop, which will contribute to the CHORUS+ project, was to gain insights into the techno-economic trends in enterprise search and to study how they will impact the European economy and society.

The workshop was organised to discuss and analyse the following aspects of enterprise search:

• Market Dynamics: Painting the landscape of enterprise search including current and emerging business models of providers of enterprise search solutions and services and their respective value chains
• Future Prospects: Identifying emerging techno-economic trends, discussing likely developments and the future market structure in the domain of enterprise search
• SWOT Analysis: Exploring the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) for the Europe Union with respect to enterprise search
• Policy Options: Is there any need of policy changes or new policies, or support actions in the field of enterprise search in the EU and if yes, what should these be?

Fourteen invited enterprise search experts and several CHORUS+ partners attended the workshop that was organized in these three thematic sessions, as corresponding thematic areas of enterprise search:

a) Technologies, solutions and research issues

b) Services, applications and business models

c) Techno-economic aspects of enterprise search.

Some of the main themes of the "Exploring the Future of Enterprise Search" were:

• enterprise search in the cloud
• the link between enterprise search and mobile search, i.e. mobile access to enterprise resources
• convergence between enterprise search and database technology
• enterprise search in unstructured data
• the link between enterprise search and semantic search
• the social elements of enterprise search
• enterprise search and web search (tracking products and customers after they have left the enterprise)

Agenda:

For more information about the workshop sessions, please see the Final Agenda.

Presentations:

Day 1 – 13 October 2011

Keynote speech

• The Challenges of Search for Enterprise Search and Search Based Applications - Gregory Grefenstette (Exalead)

Session 1: Technologies, solutions and research issues

• Semantic Enterprise Search and Content Intelligence - Matthieu Jonglez (Smartlogic)
• Open Source Techniques Push Enterprise Search & Search Driven Applications, Especially the Application of Text Analytics - Christoph Goller (IntraFind)
• Overcoming Obstacles to Enterprise Search Research - David Hawking (Funnelback)
• Visual Search for Enterprise Documents - Mika Könnölä (Documill)

Session 2: Services, applications and business models (50min)

• Cloud-based Enterprise Search: Future or Reality? - Kathrine Hammervold (Microsoft)
• Google as a Role Model for an Enterprise Search Team - Harald Kirsch (Raytion)
• Visual Asset Search: Application Areas and Business Models - Ray Owens (LTU Technologies)
• Technologies for Mobile Application Development - Andrew Terry (Toumetis)

Session 3: Techno-economic aspects of enterprise search

• Enterprise Search - A Gap Analysis? - Martin White (Intranet Focus)
• Search and the Contraction of Markets - Lessons Learned from the Catholic Church, Railroad Tycoons, and Oil Magnates - Hendrik Speck (University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern)
• The Future for Enterprise Search in Europe Based on Altered Demographics - Henrik Strindberg (Findwise)
• Visioning Enterprise Search in Future Enterprises - Man-Sze Li (IC Focus)

Day 2 – 14 October 2011

Workshop and Think-Tank Roundtable discussion of the future trends and directions of Enterprise Search (covering technological and techno-economic aspects)

• What have we learned: technologies and business models
• What does this mean for Europe?

This expert workshop is regarded as an important part of the ongoing IPTS efforts to study the evolution of enterprise search at a time when this field is rapidly changing. Given the multi-disciplinary nature of enterprise search, it was deemed necessary to bring together at the workshop experts from different backgrounds, i.e. people from industry, academia and policy-making bodies, to discuss these important issues.

Contact:

Stavri Nikolov

Shara Monteleone, Shara.Monteleone(at)ec.europa.eu