Thunderstone Search Appliance
Frequently Asked Questions

Search Made Simple

Who is Thunderstone and what is the Search Appliance?

Thunderstone is one of the original pioneers of search technology. Since 1981, Thunderstone has provided more than 400,000 licenses of its search software to business, government and educational institutions around the world.

Thunderstone's search technology powers search applications for the eBay, QVC, Corbis, About.com and ZDNet sites for example. It is also used in-house for enterprise applications by the Associated Press, GE and many other organizations. The same technology that enables these applications powers the Thunderstone Search Appliance. The Search Appliance is an all-in-one, hardware, software and support, search solution.

How is the Thunderstone Search Appliance different from other enterprise search solutions?

The Thunderstone Search Appliance is designed to be a "plug-and-play solution". Just plug it in, set the controls and your users can begin searching. And, Thunderstone's award winning software delivers the same quality results its customers have come to expect for more than 32 years.

Because the Search Appliance is an all-in-one hardware and software solution it doesn't take a small army of professional service providers to get it up and running or to keep it operating at peak. And it won't break the bank, unlike competitive offerings.

What features does the Thunderstone Search Appliance offer that no one else has?

There are many unique features. Here are some examples:

First, the Thunderstone Search Appliance is easily the top performer in its class. It is able to perform 1,000 typical searches per minute and up to 2,500 per minute at peak. That's over 1 million queries per day!

Second, the Thunderstone Search Appliance does not require a web server as competitive products do. Non-web information does not have to be published to a web site in order to be accessed.

Third, it indexes PDFs, JavaScript and Flash content and links. This is important for crawling web content that can not be found via conventional HTML hyperlinks.

No other search provider has more experience developing high-end, high-quality search capabilities. Whether it's "crawling" dynamic JavaScript links or highlighting hits in Acrobat or providing "best bets" functionality to assist searchers, Thunderstone continues in its position as THE technological innovator in the field of search.

How does the ranking system of the Thunderstone Search Appliance work?

Thunderstone's internal search algorithms have been developed and refined over the past 32 years and utilize many factors to produce the relevancy and ranking of its search results. Thunderstone software has been used to perform literally billions of searches over the last 20 years and Thunderstone uses that knowledge to continually refine and enhance its capabilities to consistently set the standard for search quality and innovation. And you can even tweak them yourself. Yes, the Thunderstone Search Appliance's relevancy and ranking parameters can be tuned by the user!

Why offer an appliance instead of shipping traditional enterprise software?

The Thunderstone Search Appliance combines the simplicity of a hosted service with the security and performance of a local solution. Using Thunderstone's advanced software the Search Appliance can index and retrieve information from your corporate web site, your intranet and information stored throughout the organization in databases, folders and files. Thunderstone itself supports the Appliance directly via remote diagnostics and maintenance. All-in-all, this provides excellent value without adding the administrative overhead associated with traditional enterprise search solutions.

What if I have custom requirements that the Search Appliance can't handle?

Thunderstone maintains a complete line of software based search solutions in addition to the Appliance. These include its award winning Texis and Webinator products that can be customized to serve almost any information retrieval or search application. If your organization's needs exceed what can be accomplished by the Search Appliance or if you have custom requirements, Thunderstone has an excellent solution for you. Also, Thunderstone now offers the Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliance, a brand-new product that combines the simplicity of an Appliance environment with more of the advanced structured searching capabilities of Thunderstone Texis. The Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliance enables standard SQL data retrieval in combination with full-text search.

Can the Thunderstone Search Appliance index NT and NFS file systems?

Yes. The Thunderstone Search Appliance can mount both NT and NFS files systems directly. No need to publish information to a web site or implement a proxy server to access.

Can the Thunderstone Search Appliance access enterprise content sources such as MS SharePoint™, Lotus Notes™, Doumentum™, etc.?

Yes. The Thunderstone Search Appliance has the ability to directly index many enterprise content stores, and connectors are available for many other sources.

Will the Thunderstone Search Appliance search Microsoft Office™ and Adobe Acrobat™ files?

Yes, Thunderstone searches more than 150 file types including Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat files.

Can the Thunderstone Search Appliance search databases directly?

Yes. The Thunderstone Search Appliance will index information directly from a database. Databases currently supported include MS SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, DB2, PostgreSQL and, of course, Thunderstone Texis.

Can the Thunderstone Search Appliance index video, digital images and other binary content?

Yes. The Thunderstone Search Appliance can index binary content assuming those files have some descriptive text (metadata) such as photo captions, song titles, etc.

How is support provided for the Thunderstone Search Appliance hardware?

Thunderstone includes two years of support and maintenance with the "one-time" purchase of the Search Appliance. This includes upgrades, as well as replacement of the hardware if necessary. Many Thunderstone customers deploy two Search Appliances for redundancy because of the cost-effectiveness of the solution.

Is the Thunderstone Search Appliance available internationally?

At this time the Thunderstone Search Appliance is restricted only by United States Export Restrictions Policy, making the Search Appliance available, like all Thunderstone search solutions, almost everywhere around the globe

How do I buy a Thunderstone Search Appliance?

Just visit http://www.thunderstone.com or contact a representative at +1 216-820-2200.