Thunderstone Blog: Customized Search Engine & Search Software

Comparing Server vs. Hosted Search Solutions

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 14:14:09 -0400

When it’s time to invest in a new search solution, one of the decisions you’ll need to make is whether you want to use an in-house server or Cloud hosting. Each option has advantages and disadvantages, so it’s important to weigh the pros and cons to decide which is right for your organization.

The Pros and Cons of Servers and Hosted Solutions

Utilizing an in-house file server for your search hardware or software offers several advantages, starting with ownership. Installing the search software on an existing server gives you more control of the application and the hardware you use for that solution. This means that you are in control of any hardware resources and backup schedules, whereas those decisions are left to an outside company when you rely on a hosted solution.

Since your server is in-house, you can make modifications to fit your preferences. Of course, this also depends on your level of comfort in terms of installing, updating, and modifying search software. These changes do require familiarity with your server’s operating systems and configurations. If you’re up to the challenge the level of control offered by an in-house server is an attractive option.

Another advantage of an in-house file server is that your content never leaves your premises. This means that nobody outside of your company has to see your information. With a hosted solution, there will be other people who have access to the cloud, and each person with access increases the risk of an unwanted party dealing with your hosted search solution.

While in-house servers offer control, Cloud Services, also known as Software as a Service (Saas), are a lot less work because you rely on a vendor for server infrastructure, availability, and security. Since an outside vendor hosts your search solution for you, you aren’t always on the hook for making regular updates or maintaining the server. When you use an in-house server, you’re the one in charge of making sure it stays up to date – not to mention maintaining both the physical and online security of you server. If the server fails, it’s up to you to fix it, whereas that responsibility falls on your vendor when you host your search solution.

Another big advantage of Cloud Services is scalability. You decide how much space you pay for and scaling up is quick and easy – just pay for more space. When you use your own server, you’ll need the right technical resources to increase server space.

Invest in the Right Search Solution for Your Needs

There isn’t a bad option between utilizing an in-house file server or opting for a hosted solution, but there is a right one for your organization. At Thunderstone, we can work with you to determine which solution is best suited for your needs and provide reliable, easy-to-use search engine software and hardware that can be customized for your needs.

Thunderstone is ready to help your organization take control of its information. Request a demo today to test out our enterprise search solutions for yourself or contact us to learn more from one of our experts.

How to Prepare and Organize Data and Content for Better Search Through Search Technology

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 08:05:47 -0400

A little organization can make a world of difference for your organization when your users need to access important information. A lack of structure can make it more difficult for your search solution to pull relevant results. For people within your company, bad data organization can result in wasted time and the creation of duplicate files. For external users, it can lead to people leaving your site to find what they need elsewhere.

Finding and accessing your own information shouldn’t be a problem. That’s why it’s important to create some structure for your data and content so that all the information you need is in its right place.

Better Data Organization for Search Solutions

If you have access to structured data, that’s a great place to start. Structured data can make it easy for your organization to find the information you need if you know the correct attributes. While search engine software can crawl unstructured data, the addition of structured data can improve the relevance and precision of results.

An electronic database allows you to create collections of information that are organized and stored for use. The use of a database allows specific users to sort and tag files, text, and other information in a way that improves organization and information retrieval.

One way to prepare and organize your data is to invest in a database management systems (DBMS) based on a relational data model. This setup allows specific users to access and manage relations relation, which are two-dimensional tables that store data about objects, events, and other entities. Relational columns can be organized into certain characteristics, while rows stand for certain files, records, or other data items.

Users with access can then add, update, find, sort, or retrieve data as needed, adding features to the records along the way to improve the relevance of search results or organize files so that they’re only available to certain people. For example, an ecommerce site that sells clothing can organize different items by identifying product characteristics like product color, brand, type of clothing, and other characteristics. These criteria help filter out results that would have appeared from unstructured text. As a result, a user searching for a new pair of shorts won’t be as likely to see results for short sleeve shirts simply because they both use the word “short.”

Structured data also allows you to organize data so that only the right people see certain information. Data items can be tagged with user access so that they don’t end up in results pages for outside users and other people without proper clearance. The right search software can extract structured data from text to enhance the search. Also, the right software can be taught to identify if a file contains specific patterns, for example a credit card number, to constrain the results. As a result, you can set the software to flag those pages to make them more secure. Thanks to this type of advanced logic, it can help you keep your data organized even if a user isn’t there to manually sort something entered into the system.

Invest in Search Engine Software and Appliances That Keep Your Data Organized

Organized data seems like a no brainer, but it does require the right technology to succeed. Text searching and relational database management each rely upon radically different paradigms for organizing and retrieving information, so you need a solution that marries both together.

Thunderstone search engine software and search appliances give you benefits of a SQL relational database (RDBMS) that intelligently queries and manages databases. With our core technology, we can solve even the most complex information retrieval challenges.

Ready to take control of your organization’s information? Request a demo today to test out Thunderstone’s enterprise search solutions for yourself or contact us to talk to one of our experts about we can help you organize your data.

5 Notable Digital Trends in the Healthcare Industry

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 13:27:10 -0400

As with many industries, healthcare has made strides to become more digital over the years. This trend has resulted in multiple improvements toward patient care and internal systems, and the push to digitize the healthcare industry isn’t slowing down anytime soon. From new ways to treat patients to improving electronic health records, here are some notable trends in the healthcare industry.

Virtual Care

As technology advances, more healthcare providers have shifted to providing convenient consultations in a virtual or mobile setting. Virtual care offerings like telemedicine and remote patient monitoring devices have led to affordable, effective ways to provide care that’s both convenient to practitioners and patients. As patients and doctors become more tech savvy, virtual care allows doctors and other healthcare professionals to see more patients and give these patients access to experts without having to worry about being in a different location at set times.

Wearables/Internet of Things

Health-based wearable items aren’t a new discovery, but more healthcare organizations are turning to the Internet of Things (IoT) and data-sharing devices to help learn more about patients. Wearable devices allow healthcare professionals to track important data in real time whether patients are in a medical facility, at home, or anywhere else. The IoT allows these professionals to then collect that data for and add it to electronic health records and other files that these professionals will need to access to determine treatment methods and make other data-based determinations.

The Cloud

Yahoo Finance estimates that the global healthcare cloud computing market will continue to grow from now through 2026, reaching a $40 billion market value at that time. As the healthcare industry continues to grow, more hospitals and other organizations are turning to move their IT infrastructure off premises and to affordable, scalable hosted search solutions that allow them to free up physical space and cut staffing costs.

Increased Security

As hospitals collect more personal information and invest in more internet connectivity through the internet of things and cloud-based data, the more they need to take cybersecurity seriously. BusinessWire reports that IoT-related data breaches rose from 15 to 26 percent since 2017. As healthcare data becomes more digital – which it will – it’s imperative that the healthcare industry continue to increase security efforts to protect both medical institutions and patients from cyberattacks. As a result, security spending should continue to rise in the healthcare industry.

EHR Optimization

Electronic health record systems are commonplace in the healthcare industry, but more organizations are taking steps to make their data more accessible and interactive. Investments in new data infrastructure, such as databases that can store and retrieve vast amounts of structured data, have allowed organizations to clean up their electronic health records. This shift allows healthcare professionals to easily organize and retrieve information through a database management system – as long as they also have the right search technology to search internal and external information for an entire organization.

Achieve Flexible Data Management Through Enterprise Search Technology

As the medical industry becomes more digital, there will be even more ways to collect and access important information. As a result, it’s increasingly important that healthcare organizations invest in the right search technology so that users always have access to the right information. Not only will this improve interoperability, better access to complete patient information allows healthcare professionals to provide a truly value-based care system for their patients.

For example, flexible data management allows medical practitioners to find what they need right away, whether they’re using a desktop or a mobile device. If a doctor needs to look up drug facts for a patient, they can filter their search to find the right information. Meanwhile, the system can also anonymize information if it recognizes personal information. This allows researchers to reference case information without seeing patient names or other sensitive info in search snippets. It can even block access to certain users to keep your organization compliant with HIPAA.

When you need to achieve flexible data management, Thunderstone can help. Our suite of search engine software and applications features the fully integrated structure of an SQL relational database (RDBMS) that intelligently queries and manages databases of up to hundreds of millions of records. This gives you the ability to store and search massive text documents within standard database table.

Don’t settle for a search solution that doesn’t give you complete access to your data. Request a demo today to test out Thunderstone’s enterprise search solutions for yourself or contact us to talk to one of our experts about we can help your organization control its information.

The Difference Between Search Software, Hardware, and Other Options

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 13:17:45 -0400

While a Search Appliance can be an attractive option in many circumstances there are several possible ways to get a search solution depending on your preferences. The different possible delivery methods include hardware-based appliances, software, and service-based models. We’ll look at the different methods that exist and the pros and cons of each to help you make the right decision.

Hardware-Based Search Appliance

The hardware-based search appliance is a popular approach, and maybe the one you had in mind when you started investigating search solutions.

Some of the main advantages are that it is a self-contained solution that you can install in your data center with little effort. As an appliance from a single vendor, you have a single point of contact for any technical issues you may have, so there won’t be any finger pointing between the hardware vendor, operating system vendor, and application vendor. If something goes wrong, a single support call should resolve the problem. Of course, you should make sure that your vendor is equipped to handle your support calls and know how long it will take to fix any problems.

Another key advantage is that you don’t need to provision additional servers to run the application on or worry about incompatibilities between your hardware and operating system and the application. It just works when you take it out of the box and put it in the rack. The flip side of that is if you already have a uniform hardware environment that you like or are moving towards a virtualization environment a separate hardware appliance does not necessarily fit in well.

Virtual Appliance

If you already have a virtualization program under way, then a virtual appliance may be the right solution for you. What is a virtual appliance? Simply put, it is an image of the appliance that you can load onto a virtual server in your virtualization environment. It has all the same features of the hardware appliance.

What are the advantages of the virtual appliance? Similar to the hardware appliance, it is a self-contained image, so you don’t need to worry about operating system or software installs. Since you are providing the hardware for the virtual appliance, you can most likely use existing hardware you have and share it with other services.

In addition, most virtualization environments can also provide fault tolerance, or at least an easy way to restart the image on alternate hardware in the case of hardware failure. If you have sufficient spare capacity, you should not have any down time due to hardware problems. Since you are in control of the hardware, you can allocate as many or as few resources to the search solution to achieve the performance you want.

If you don’t have a current virtualization environment, then the additional learning experience of getting started with one is probably not worth it.

Installed Software

Another option is to install the search software on an existing server. If you are comfortable installing software, then this can be an attractive option, as you get more control of the application. Similar to the virtual appliance, you are in control of the hardware resources you make available to the search solution, as well as the backup schedules.

In addition to being in control of the hardware, you also have more flexibility to modify the solution to meet your needs. The source code to the search application is provided, unlike the appliances which are more of a black box.

The main advantages of the software solution are the control over the application, and the ability to choose the hardware it will run on. The disadvantages are that you do need to be familiar with your server’s operating systems and configurations to choose how to install the software in the most efficient manner possible.

Cloud Services

Cloud Services, also known as Software as a Service (Saas), is one of the hot trends in computing today. Essentially, it means that the vendor is hosting the solution for you, so you only need to worry about integrating the service into your existing infrastructure.

Typically, you can pay on some kind of metered service based on how much you use. This has the advantage of typically being quick and easy to set up and not requiring a lot of technical resources on your end. The downside is that the search data is no longer on your infrastructure, and you are reliant on a third party to keep your service running.

Find the Right Enterprise Search Solution for Your Needs

No matter which type of search solution best fits your criteria, it’s important that whatever you choose makes search simpler – and more powerful – for you and your users. It’s important to pick the right search solution instead of a bad choice at a cheaper price. At Thunderstone, we have decades of experience providing reliable, easy-to-use and maintain search engine software and hardware that can be customized to your specific needs and budget.

Ready to end your search for the right search engine software or hardware? Request a demo today to test out Thunderstone’s enterprise search solutions for yourself or contact us to talk to a Thunderstone expert and your organization’s search needs.

Why Does a Relational Database Matter for Search Engine Software?

Mon, 13 May 2019 13:15:39 -0400

Relational databases and search engines don’t “marry” easily, which can lead some people to think to two can’t work in tandem. However, that doesn’t mean that relational databases don’t matter for search engines. While difficult, there are ways that can allow you to take advantage of relational databases through your search engine solution.

Why is a Relational Database Beneficial for Search Engine Software?

Most recent DBMSs are based on the relational data model, which is great for handling complicated queries and database operations. The fundamental organizational structure for data in the relational model involves something called a relation, which is a two-dimensional table made up of rows and columns that stores data about entities. These entities are objects or events. For example, a healthcare organization could list patients, doctors, insurance carriers, and services as entities that require data collection.

Relational columns represent specific data characteristics, such as specific attributes or data items patient names, home addresses, and other details. The rows signify records or occurrences. In our medical example, these could be services or actions completed by doctor, patients, and other similar data items. Every record in a given table is unique, which allows relational search to pinpoint these exact rows and make it easier for people to access their information.

Thanks to these qualities, relational databases offer many advantages that can improve the overall quality of search results. They help enable better sorting and filtering options, such as being able to search for results based on product color, manufacturer, or other specific details. It also allows the search to see past basic text when pulling these results. For example, a normal search for red shoes may lead Red Wing boots to appear simply because of the name. With a relational database, the color and manufacturer are separate attributes, which allows for more accurate results based on intent on not basic text.

How Relational Databases Can Benefit Search Engine Software

In a basic sense, databases serve as electronic rolodexes while search engines act as the index of a book. In other words, a good database houses all your information while a search engine can access information within that database. The challenge here is that relational search needs to properly and thoroughly crawl a wide variety of data sources, understand the relationships between them, and provide accurate, relevant results.

Another challenge is that databases can store and retrieve a lot of structured data, but search engines typically query unstructured text. As a result, it’s difficult to properly design a relational database for search, but it’s immensely valuable when done right.

That’s where Thunderstone can help. Our Texis search software is a database management system (DBMS) which follows the relational database model and addresses any inclusion of narrative full text. Because Texis is based on the versatility of open standard SQL, it can address complicated search requirements. It also serves as an "intelligent agent," allowing users to quickly and easily access complicated information, allowing you to take full advantage of complicated relational databases without it harming your ability to search within your organization.

Complicated isn’t a bad thing when you have the right solution. Request a demo today to test out Thunderstone’s enterprise search solutions for yourself or contact us to talk to a Thunderstone expert about how we can help you harness the benefits of relational search for your organization.

What is the Difference Between a Database and a Search Engine?

Tue, 12 Feb 2019 14:22:28 -0500

The lines between a database and a search engine aren’t always clear. For the average user, this may not be something they ever consider, but some clarity is beneficial for any business trying to solve any search challenges. Here’s a quick rundown on the differences between a database and a search engine.

What is a Database?

In short, a database is a collection of information that is organized and stored to be accessed for later use. As an example, a manual version of a database would be like a rolodex with specific fields of information. In this scenario, information is recorded on sheets of paper, possibly organized in folders, and stored in a single place where people with access can go and retrieve that information when necessary.

An electronic database operates largely the same way, except all this data is structured to ease of organization and information retrieval. This database is accessed and managed by specific users through a database management system (DBMS). Users with access can then add, update, find, sort, or retrieve data as needed.

What is a Search Engine?

If a database is like a rolodex, then search engines are more like the index of a book—except that it’s a collection of every index for every book you have. Databases and search engines are both capable of search for data and handling queries. Each technology relies on different paradigms to organize and retrieve information. While databases can store and retrieve a vast amount of structured data, search engines can search unstructured text.

Search engines vary greatly in scope. If you ask the average person about search engines, he or she will think of Google and Bing as examples. However, search engines also apply smaller-scale full-text search software, such as those for online publishing, interactive catalogs, classified advertising, digital asset management, intelligence and web searching.

Search engine software makes the process of retrieving relevant information much easier by allowing users to search for information with natural language text. The results will then be organized by relevance, which can include text documents, geographic information, images, video, audio, and other payload data.

Why Not Have Both?

While databases and search engines don’t “marry” easily, there is technology available that offers a true marriage of the two. Thunderstone’s search engine software and search appliances give users the benefits of both thanks to Texis, the core technology for all Thunderstone products.

Texis is the first search engine software available with the fully-integrated structure of an SQL relational database (RDBMS) that intelligently queries and manages databases. This is due to Thunderstone’s Metamorph, a concept-based natural language search engine that uses advanced lexical set logic to intelligently understand search queries and retrieve relevant responses.

Whether your business needs a solution for complex information retrieval challenges or a hosted search appliance, Thunderstone can help. Request a demo for one on Thunderstone’s search engine software today or contact us to talk to a Thunderstone expert about how Texis technology can be a solution for your search challenges.

What is Enterprise Search?

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 07:50:26 -0500

Information is great until you can’t find it. Over time, businesses and organizations collect a lot of content and data necessary to run a business and drive profits. Unfortunately, all that information isn’t going to help if nobody can find what they need. That’s why organizations invest in enterprise search software and appliances to quickly and easily secure enterprise-wide information.

What Makes Enterprise Search Different from Other Types of Search?

While some types of search can only parse individual repositories, Techopedia defines enterprise search as “a system that facilitates enterprise data research through one or more sources.” Enterprise search is designed to be able to parse through the vast array of information found on multiple repositories to make it easy for different types of users within that enterprise to look for and find the information they need. These sources commonly include:

File systems
Document management systems
Databases
Intranets
Email

This ability to locate information from multiple repositories is key because it saves users from having to dig through multiple sources to find what they need. This is extremely helpful even if they know which repository houses the information they need. When they’re not sure where it’s stored, it becomes an incredible time saver.

How Does Enterprise Search Work?

Enterprise search software does more than simply search for information. It actively organizes the information found in multiple repositories through means such as metatagging, taxonomies, and categorization to efficiently find and produce results. The search will crawl the various repositories to create a searchable index so that it can logically find information for future queries. From there, a user will use a search interface, such as a search box, and enterprise search will pull results that match the intent of the submitted query and present them in a formatted list.

A big part of why enterprise search can index vast collections of data and provide good results is through advanced technology. For example, Thunderstone’s enterprise search solutions are powered by Texis, an innovative platform that allows organizations to incorporate their own unique knowledge and expertise into customized search solutions.

At the heart of Texis is Metamorph, a concept-based natural language search engine that utilizes advanced lexical set logic. This gives our solutions the ability to provide relevant responses based on user queries, improve autocomplete suggestions, and find other patterns that improve the overall search experience. Since Texis is a search engine that’s developed as a fully-integrated SQL RDBMS optimized for full-text search, it can store and search text documents of unlimited size within standard database tables, in addition to unstructured text, making it extremely beneficial for enterprises with lots of data.

Thunderstone originally developed Texis as the engine to power custom search solutions, with tools for combining structured and unstructured data, real-time updates, large collections, and complex business rules all in one package. Texis gives developers a chance to combine their specific skills and expertise with a powerful search engine. Through Texis, these experts can easily incorporate their knowledge into customized search solutions.

A good enterprise search solution can be the difference between being able to efficiently access important data and lost information. Request a demo today to test out Thunderstone’s enterprise search solutions for yourself or contact us to talk to a Thunderstone expert and your organization’s search needs.

What is Faceted Search?

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 07:48:10 -0500

Faceted search is a powerful feature in modern search engines that makes it easy for users to find exactly what they need. This technology is a great feature for e-commerce site searches and other applications where it’s important to provide outside users with a streamlined search experience that can deliver customized results.

How Does Faceted Search Work?

Faceted search is based on structured data. Through guided navigation, searchers can use facets (or filters) to refine their queries. These facets are sets of independent attributes determined by the administrator to help classify the entries found within a searchable collection. This is extremely beneficial, especially compared to a more rigid classification scheme like a taxonomy that corresponds to only a single top-level attribute.

Faceted search vs. single taxonomies

While single taxonomies force users to choose a top-level group, faceted classification gives searchers a more flexible approach to finding specific items. For example, a single taxonomy for a dog food company might choose a top-level attribute that corresponds to either the type of dog food (dry, wet, etc.) or the type of dog (small dogs, big dogs, senior dogs, etc.), but not both. That means a taxonomy based on types of dog foods will still force a user to sift through results for all types of dogs without narrowing down the selections even further.

Faceted search can mark these search attributes as first-class facets. Users are now able to use a variety of filters to refine searches, whether these queries involve the type of dog food, type of dog, size of product, price, or any other factor that could narrow down a search. These stackable filters offer results that are much more relevant to a user with a highly-specific need instead of overwhelming them with too many unrelated products.

Is faceted search the right fit?

When dealing with a significant amount of possible search results (whether from a database, on a website or across multiple data sources), adding faceted search can help a user find what they’re looking for quicker. It may not be the right choice for smaller data sets.

On e-commerce sites, faceted navigation can help a user search for a product and quickly narrow down what they’re looking for.

Implementing faceted search

When implementing faceted search, it’s important to make sure the number of facets shown to the searcher is appropriate. Too few can be limiting in how specific a user can narrow down their search results, however too many facets can present a user with too many choices and not enough results within each facet category.

Before you add faceted search to your application, you’ll want to consider how you’ll be identifying and classifying the facets themselves. Within a large data set, what are the categories, filters, or “facets” that can help narrow down search results? For enterprise applications, this may start with file type (document, image, etc.) For an e-commerce site, this might mirror the ways that product would be organized in-store (category, color, size. etc.).

Faceted Site Search for Your Business

Thunderstone’s Parametric Search Appliance provides you with a highly customizable e-commerce site search system with faceted search, autocomplete and other capabilities that help you deliver relevant results to your users.

Parametric search (also called attribute-enhanced search) helps users narrow down their field of search to increase the chances of finding relevant information. It provides context to results that are based on unstructured information, and it allows the administrator or user to sort results in the most meaningful way.

Request a free trial of today to test out Thunderstone’s enterprise search products for yourself or contact us to talk to a Thunderstone expert about your organization’s search needs.

Integrating Advanced Search on your Website

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 13:36:28 -0400

Is your search solution actually doing its job? Some common problems caused by inadequate search software includes:

Search results aren’t showing in the right order of importance or value
Search results can’t show mixed content like products, blog content and page content
Search results don’t have the appearance you’d like them to have

So why would you like a better search solution? It helps educate you users with the right information. It directs them towards products that they want to buy. It ultimately provides a better user experience for them. With simple search solutions like Google’s soon-to-be-discontinued Google Site Search, there is very limited customization that you can make to deliver the best results to your users. The solution to this challenge is implemented a smarter, more customizable custom search appliance on your website.

Sound complicated? It’s actually easier than you think when you have an expert like Thunderstone walking you through the process. Based on our 30-plus years of experience with search solutions, the typical steps involved with integrating an advanced search appliance within your website are:

Identify What Should Be Included in Search Results

The benefit of a more advanced search box like Thunderstone’s Search Appliance is that you’re able to customize what should be indexed in search results. Thus, you can include things like

page content
blog posts
products
documentation pages
media like images and videos
FAQ’s
data from other database sources

Determine Search Results Appearance

Consider how you’d like the search results to appear to users. With a basic website search engine, results are pulled purely by keyword relevancy, and the results can’t be styled. With an advanced website search engine like Thunderstone’s Search Appliance, search results can be customized in terms of order and design of appearance.

Website Search Results Customization

For websites that feature multiple types of content, multiple subdomains, e-commerce and many other unique website setups, basic website search is not ideal. Some examples of customizations that you may want to make to search results include:

Selecting only specific pages or types of content/data that you would like to be indexed and shown to users
Ranking pages based on their importance to your organization, and their relevancy to the user
Sorting and separating different pieces of content in search rankings
Leveraging a thesaurus function to group similar results together

Website Search Results Design

Once again, with a basic website search engine, the appearance of the search results are going to likely include the title of the page, a short description, and potentially an image. But for more advanced websites, this can be very limiting in delivering the right results to the user. Customizing search results design can be useful when:

Delivering product or e-commerce results to the user, including images, pricing, and product options
Showing search results for media, including photos and videos
Showing more in-depth documentation that may include technical files, publish dates, etc.
Delivering autocomplete results in a search box for a better user experience

Embed a Search Box on Your Site

Embedding a search box on your website is simple for any web designer or developer to achieve. Whether you have an existing search box that needs to be replaced, or need to integrate a brand-new search box within your site, Thunderstone’s implementation is simple.

When it comes to search box design considerations, UX Planet has a few recommendations:

Display the search field prominently, including on mobile devices
Provide a button for the search box rather than an icon that may be confusing
Put the search box on every page
Put the search box where users expect to find it, typically in the top righthand corner of the page
Size the search box appropriately, usually allowing at least 27 characters of text input

Thunderstone for Better Site Search

The Thunderstone Search Appliance is a web indexing device that allows a web site administrator to provide a high quality search results for a number of different file types with a customized search results appearance. If your current website search engine isn’t delivering the results you want (or your users need), then check out Thunderstone’s Search Appliance, or contact us today for a demo.

What the Engineering Industry Needs to Consider When Investing in an Enterprise Search Solution?

Wed, 06 Sep 2017 13:16:02 -0400

As an engineering firm grows, it’s critical that it has a good internal search solution. At first, it’s easy to find information from one of a dozen or so projects. Over time, you gain more projects, which can lead to hundreds of thousands of highly technical files within a basic file storage structure. That’s why it’s critical that engineering firms find a search solution that is designed to address the issues that complicate the search process and provide the right results for their users.

Specific Search Solution Issues for Engineering Firms

Engineering firms face a few main challenges when it comes to search solutions. This includes the variety of searches engineers can make, as well as the overall technical nature of the business.

There are a variety of reasons why engineers would use the search function on their site. They could be looking for specific information from one of hundred, or even, thousands, of documents. They may just need some general background research on a certain field or application. They might also just be looking for a project example to use as a template or as guidance for putting a new document together.

Another problem is that in engineering, everything can be technical. These engineering documents can contain extremely detailed information and unique jargon that can create issues for an inadequate search solution. The files used at an engineering firm can go beyond the usual text files and PDFs, making it necessary for search solutions to parse through CAD files and other specific document types. In addition to the technical nature of the files and vocabulary, a search solution will also have to work with the engineering company’s internal conventions for file names and directories.

Search Appliance Solutions for Engineers

Fortunately for engineers, Thunderstone can engineer a search solution that addresses their specific issues. This starts with addressing a few critical details.

To start, a search solution for an engineering firm should utilize file format plugins for unique document types. This can help the search identify unique design files and other special items that other businesses may not rely on for their work. With these special document types, it’s also important that a search solution can use the firm’s directory structure to help with the overall search.

Due to the technical jargon in engineering, a good search solution should also be able to parse through the actual language that engineers use. The addition of a thesaurus feature helps an engineering firm’s search software find the right files based on terms that employees use, while a synonym system allows the search solution to display the right results based on the user’s intent, even if they don’t quite use the exact right terms found in the document.

One great solution for engineering firms is Thunderstone’s Parametric Search Appliance. This solution can address all the previously mentioned issues and help your results display the most relevant authors, projects, and documents that apply to your user’s search. Parametric search is also flexible, powerful, and easy to use, allowing us to customize the solution to optimize it for your setup.

We work with you to find the search solution you need. Contact us online or give us a call at 216-820-2200 to start our three-step head start program to get a customized search solution that truly fits your needs.

What the Education Industry Needs to Consider When Investing in an Enterprise Search Solution

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 13:04:47 -0400

It can be difficult to find the right search solution for a college, university, or other educational institution so that users can gather the information they need to succeed. The right search solution affects multiple types of users, including current students, prospective students, their parents, and anyone who works at the affected institution, so it’s critical to find a search option that can cater to all these parties.

Specific Search Solution Issues for Educational Institutions

Thanks to a wide range of users, educational institutions can amass a hodge-podge of different sites. These can include main “marketing” sites, individual department sites, and student/faculty pages. This assortment of sites with different functions and capabilities can prove problematic for search functions.

Another issue is that these sites can be targeted to different types of users. The marketing site can be directed toward prospective students and their parents. Student and faculty pages may be designed for use of a group of people with individual logins. Each one of these sites need to provide its users with results that match their intent. For example, a “marketing” site should help users find information on the school itself, whereas an internal login for the school library’s site should returns results for documents, books, and other files in the library’s database.

Along with the wide variety of sites, there’s also the possibility that different departments might run their own sites. This means that the institution needs a search solution that is powerful enough to handle many files, as well as flexible enough to match the needs of each different department and its users.

Search Appliance Solutions for College and University Sites

With the wide range of potential sites and users, a high-performance search solution that can allow multiple administrative users is in order. In this setup, these users can be delegated permissions on specific areas of the index or specific settings. For example, a College of Medicine might administer its own search while still feeding results into the main University Search. There could also be a situation where one user may be responsible for the look and feel of a search while somebody else oversees the actual crawling of the search.

The range of potential sites and audiences can also be addressed with the ability to promote particular pages for specific searches, including custom messages in the search results page. For example, a search for “Admissions” could link to the appropriate page with a specific message with it, or a search for the sports team could show the latest scores or schedule. That will provide each audience with customized results that can improve their overall search experience.

If you need powerful customizable search solutions for your school, Thunderstone can help. High-performance solutions like our parametric search appliance or the highly-customizable Webinator web index and retrieval software can help your users find what they need, no matter which one of your sites they’re using. Contact us online or give us a call at 216-820-2200 to start the process of getting a customized search solution that’s built for your institution’s needs.

The Benefits of a Custom Search Engine Tool

Wed, 07 Oct 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Not all websites search needs are the same. A custom solution may be needed to handle your searching needs. Thunderstone's TEXIS can provide you with a full text search engine that will give you the power you need to handle your internal searches.

What Exactly is TEXIS?

TEXIS is a fully-integrated full text search engine. That makes TEXIS a flexible option that works with numerous integrated applications, including:

message profiling and handling
image library management
help-desk support
online news retrieval
business intelligence
research libraries
litigation support
Internet retail operations

TEXIS is powerful search engine option that can handle 10,000 records and more with an English language vocabulary of 250,000 words, plus phrase concept associations for natural language queries. In fact, TEXIS is the core technology for our other products, as it encompasses database and search engine capabilities.

What Makes it Different from Other Search Engines?

The key for TEXIS is versatility and customization. TEXIS isn't limited to website or fileserver searches; it can be tailored to do even more, giving you an option that be customized to be as powerful as you need it to be. TEXIS is the only search engine with a Structured Query Language configuration. This provides you with added benefits and advantages when it comes to complicated search requirements.

Fully-Integrated Full Text Search Engines from Thunderstone

Some of our customers use TEXIS as a search engine, others need it as an e-commerce system. Our TEXIS technology can be customized to fit your needs, so don't be afraid to tell us what you need and we'll be happy to work with you.Contact us online or give us a call at 216-820-2200 for more information on how TEXIS from Thunderstone can benefit you.

Thunderstone Offers Product Catalog Search

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Increase sales and reduce customer service calls when your customers quickly and easily find the products they need.

CLEVELAND, OH — Thunderstone Software LLC announces the Thunderstone Catalog Search solution designed so all kinds of business, from manufacturers, industrial supply and other B2B suppliers to online web stores can boost sales with enhanced search capabilities.

Query auto-complete providing suggestions as you type, often showing the desired product with a few keystrokes
Full catalog import allows searching and faceting on any attribute
Automatically select facets based on search results
Highly configurable search results order, using one or more of: relevance, popularity, rating, price, profit, "featured", any other product attribute, e.g. size or capacity
Preconfigured searches on SEO friendly pages
Analytics integration
Configurable search result styles including grid and list, which can include pictures and "Add to Cart" links.

The Thunderstone Catalog Solution can be delivered in a variety of ways to suit the customer, include a hosted SaaS solution, virtual appliance, hardware appliance or software. Each comes with Thunderstone’s Head Start Assistance which ensures a successful deployment, and Investment Protection Program so as your needs grow the solution can be scaled up without starting over with a new solution.

To find out more about the Thunderstone Catalog Solution call +1 216 820 2200, Monday - Friday, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Eastern Time, or visit www.thunderstone.com/catalog. After an initial needs analysis you can try the solution for 30-days with your own catalog to see how it can enhance your web based catalog.

For over 30 years Thunderstone Software has been dedicated to providing the best search solutions possible to government, corporate, and non-profit customers, with exceptional service and devotion to finding the right solution for the customer.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com/catalog or email

April 2008 Newsletter

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

April 2008 - Archive

QUESTIONS ON SEARCH

What are some of the key technologies to look at when you are trying to turn data into information and business success?

Before looking at specific technologies it is important to determine where information could be used to improve business success. Is it a matter of too much or too little information, or not being able to access it efficiently?

While there are several key technologies today that can help convert information into business success, including search data warehouses which allow users to query all structured and unstructured data in an ad-hoc manner to answer their questions, and collaboration tools to let groups enhance information, the real key technology is a platform that is flexible enough to meet the changing needs of the business as different types of information become available, and the business goals change.

These tools will help users set the line between information overload, and not finding the information they want. Some of the technologies a flexible tool enables are alerting applications that can notify employees of new or changed content they are interested in, filters to hide the content they don't care about, and passive search embedded into applications that can suggest related information as content is created.

To get your questions on search answered please email .

HAPPENINGS

Stephen E. Arnold (President of Arnold Information Technology) interviewed John Turnbull (President & CEO of Thunderstone Software LLC) for the "Search Wizards Speak" feature on his "Beyond Search" blog. You can read the article at http://www.arnoldit.com/search-wizards-speak/thunderstone.html

UPCOMING EVENT

Enterprise Search Summit 2008

The Enterprise Search Summit in New York City, May 19-21, is focused on extending search as a major computing platform. It is held at the Hilton New York. Thunderstone is a Gold-Level Sponsor. Come and visit us at tabletop 8.

If you are going to be in New York for the Enterprise Search Summit, please let us know. We'll schedule some time to get together and make sure we are serving you as well as possible.

SAVE $200 ON ATTENDENCE AT THE ENTERPRISE SEARCH SUMMIT IN NEW YORK CITY

ENTERPRISE SEARCH SUMMIT is a highly intense, in-depth, 2-day conference that covers how to develop, implement and enhance cutting-edge internal search capabilities. If you are an information manager or IT or search professional, ENTERPRISE SEARCH SUMMIT is where you will learn strategies and build the skill sets you need to make your organization's content not only searchable but "findable."

Save up to $200 on a Gold Pass or Full 2-Day Conference attendee pass, compliments of Thunderstone Software LLC, by registering online at http://www.enterprisesearchsummit.com/ and using the Priority Code THST88 to automatically receive your discount. Choose between:

a Gold Pass -- which includes the Full 2-Day Conference Pass (May 20 - May 21) plus your choice of two half-day pre-conference workshops on May 19. You'll pay only $1,095, instead of up to $1,295.

or just the Full 2-Day Conference Pass (May 20 - May 21.) You'll pay only $895, instead of up to $1,095.

Either way, you will have complete access to enjoy all the tabletop displays in the vendor showcase for FREE.

Thunderstone's Fred Harmon () and Peter Thusat () look forward to seeing you at the 2008 Enterprise Search Summit in Manhattan. Call us at +1 216 820 2200 if you'd like to schedule a time to meet with us at tabletop 8.

AN ENTERPRISE SEARCH TOOL SELF-CHECK UP

by Stephen E. Arnold
sa at arnoldit.com

I don't want to repeat the information in the first three edition of Enterprise Search Report or my new study Beyond Search: What to Do When Your Search System Doesn't Work. I can, however, pull out some of the key points and offer these as a simple check list:

Do you conduct user surveys and ask employees about their likes, dislikes, and needs with regard to your enterprise search system? If you answered "yes", do you take action and then do a follow up survey, to determine how the change is perceived? If "yes," congratulations. If "no", you may be flying blind.

When you run a query, how long does it take the system to return results? If your system is as fast as Google's or Microsoft's Live.com, kudos. If your Intranet search system is slower, users may give up and go elsewhere for information. Obviously, when users don't use the search system, it's not meeting their needs. In my research, some enterprise search systems return results in a minute or more. That's too long to make a harried employee wait.

Does your system index new and changed content every few minutes? If you answer "yes", you are in tune with today's need for near-real time information. In my work, more than 80 percent of search systems update content on a daily or less frequent basis. These systems don't have the current information employees require. Keep in mind that most information requests are satisfied with the most recent information, so delays in index updates are one of the major causes of dissatisfaction. Needed information is not in the system and, therefore, not available.

Does your enterprise search system provide its users with suggestions or links to information tangential to their direct query? If you answered "yes", pat yourself on the back. You are providing a system that makes it easier for some employees to explore or discover information without playing guessing games with a search box.

Does your enterprise system automatically classify information so a user can point-and-click her way through the available information for her security level and job function? If you answered "yes", take a break and relax. You are in the select few who have implemented a useful content processing function for your system's users.

Is your system up 24x7 with 99.999998 uptime? If you answered "yes", you have enterprise-class uptime. Most enterprise search systems are not able to meet this uptime target unless the service is hosted and managed off your premises.

What if you answered "no" to these questions? As the saying goes, "Houston, we have a problem."

Read the full article at: http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2008/04/11/enterprise-search-disappointing-and-annoying-users/#more-236

NEW UPGRADE OPTIONS OFFERED FOR THUNDERSTONE'S MAINTENANCE & SUPPORT PROGRAM

The annual maintenance agreement on your licensed Thunderstone search solution provides you with a Standard, Enhanced or Premium Level Maintenance & Support Program.

MSP STANDARD LEVEL
MSP STANDARD LEVEL includes all relevant software enhancements and upgrades during the covered term plus convenient access to Thunderstone's well-qualified technical support engineers by phone, email and message board. For Appliance customers it provides free replacement and overnight shipment of any hardware that requires replacement due to hardware failure.

MSP ENHANCED LEVEL
In addition to everything provided in MSP STANDARD LEVEL, Thunderstone customers at MSP ENHANCED LEVEL also enjoy:

One day of remote training, consulting and/or customized software development services to support initial project implementation activities.
Scheduled Quarterly Reviews to analyze system performance, resolve known user and administrator issues, discuss current/future needs, etc.
Automated backup of Appliance settings at Thunderstone for easy restorations.
DISCOUNTED rates offered on additional desired training, consulting and/or customized software development.

MSP PREMIUM LEVEL
In addition to everything provided in MSP STANDARD and ENHANCED LEVELS, Thunderstone customers at MSP PREMIUM LEVEL will automatically receive:

Two additional (three total) days of remote training, consulting and/or customized software development services to support initial project implementation activities.
Priority Access to technical support resources and staff.
Membership on Thunderstone's Customer Advisory Board.
One day of on-site consulting services provided at the customers' preferred location in North America per year.
One day of remote training, consulting and/or customized software development per year.

Now Thunderstone customers who participate in Thunderstone's MSP STANDARD LEVEL Maintenance & Support Program may "upgrade" their annual maintenance agreement to the higher MSP LEVEL of their choice and obtain all the benefits offered at the MSP ENHANCED or MSP PREMIUM LEVELS.

For more information and pricing details about the options available to you, simply send an email to or phone Fred Harmon at +1 216 820 2200 ext. 105.

TECH TIPS: EQUIVALENCE FILES AKA THESAURUS OR SYNONYMS

All the Thunderstone Search Solutions, including Texis, Webinator and the Thunderstone Search Appliance, include a thesaurus which can be used to expand search terms out to cover the concept the user is interested in.

The included thesaurus can be extended or replaced by a custom thesaurus to match your specific needs. To create the thesaurus you can use your favorite editor to create a plain text file. This file needs to be compiled before being used.

The file consists of the word the user entered, followed by a comma separated list of synonyms to search for. For example if the file contained the line:

car,ford,chevy,toyota

A search for "car" would also search for "ford", "chevy" or "toyota". When compiling the equivalence file you can specify the relationships between the words on each line. With the Thunderstone Search Appliance this is specified via the "Permutations" option in the interface, and for the software tools the -l option to the backref program.

The options available are:

None (backref -l1) - no permutations are done, creating a single direction association, using the example above "car" would also find "ford", "chevy" or "toyota", whereas a search for "chevy" would only search for "chevy".

Single (backref -l2) - a single permutation is done, creating a bi-directional association. Going back to the example above "car" would still find "ford", "chevy" or "toyota", however a search for "chevy" will now search for both "chevy" and "car".

Full (backref -l3) - a full permutation is done, creating a complete association. Using the example above any of the search terms "car", "ford", "chevy" or "toyota" will search for any of the other terms, e.g. a search for "toyota" would find "chevy".

You can use the "None" option and provide the explicit mappings, which may require a larger input file. You can also break lines up for ease of maintenance, so the following would be equivalent to the line above:

car,ford
car,chevy
car,toyota

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome to

July 2008 Newsletter

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

July 2008 - Archive

QUESTIONS ON SEARCH

Q. How are different disciplines such as enterprise search, ECM and business intelligence coming together, and what challenges or opportunities does this present to organizations in the management of their information?

A. The ever-increasing amount of information produced by and available to companies today provides sizable challenges and commensurate opportunities. To go along with that, there are a growing number of products that can help with specific aspects of handlling that information. Each of the disciplines (such as ECM, BI and search) is expanding in an attempt to provide an enterprise-wide view of the available information. Each is gaining capabilities from the other disciplines but still maintains its core view -- whether that be maintaining a central repository for all information, analyzing selected information in special ways or creating an efficient method to rapidly access and retrieve information.

Companies need to really know what information they have. And they must make intelligent decisions about how it can best be used within their workflows to provide a competitive advantage. In most organizations there are many opportunities to make better use of the available information. However, it can be a challenge to find the right tool with the features and flexibility needed.

NEWS HAPPENINGS

Free-lance writer Paul Korzeniowski interviewed, among others, Thunderstone Texis customer Derek Matthews (Lead Knowledge Architect of Arbia, Inc.) for an article to appear in the August issue of DestinationCRM magazine.

Eric Kavanagh (Host of DMRadio -- http://www.dmreview.com/dmradio) will interview John Turnbull (CEO of Thunderstone Software LLC) 21 August 2008 for a scheduled web radio show broadcast on "Enterprise Search."

How Do You Use Search In Your Enterprise?

Businesses, governments, NGOs and educational institutions use Thunderstone's enterprise search solutions in a wide range of applications. How about you? How many of the following search applications have you considered, or perhaps already implemented, at your organization?

auctions
Thunderstone has worked with well-known companies (and federal government customers) to deploy some of the most highly successful online auction sites in the world.

classified advertising
From real estate and automotive sales to personals and help wanted ads, Thunderstone's flexible search tools have made setting up online classified advertising a breeze.

CRM and help lines
When your people need to rapidly find precisely the right response to the pressing concerns of your customers, Thunderstone provides powerful search products for results you can trust.

document 'findability'
An intranet doesn't do you much good, if the file server contains documents your authorized users can't locate and retrieve as desired. Help them access data faster and securely with Thunderstone Software.

eDiscovery and litigation support
Lawyers and judges began using Thunderstone's Metamorph concept-based searching technology for litigation support more than 20 years ago and for eDiscovery applications as early as 1997.

intelligence collection/analysis
Customers employ Thunderstone's technology to create multiple independent search collections, each consisting of one or more websites. They can create special collections of web information for their users, or for competitive intelligence purposes, by indexing targeted third-party websites anywhere on the internet.

internet publishing
Thunderstone empowers viewers of your online publications to do "parametric searches" for relevant content on a particular subject, written by a specific author and published within a certain timeframe. The parameters (defined attributes) of "author" and "publish date" enable precise queries that quickly return only the exact matches your users want. Keyword, full-text search alone does not offer this capability.

knowledge management
Systems integrators can rely on Thunderstone Software for extremely robust and secure enterprise-wide information retrieval across multiple repositories that serve different types of users, who all want dynamic, context-sensitive views of defined content (structured data) with the ability to refine results through full-text searching (unstructured data.)

multimedia searching
Access/retrieval needs increasingly involve many varieties of multimedia data. Thunderstone's customers can also search for audio, graphics, photos and video files stored in databases where, thanks to Thunderstone, all the content becomes immediately searchable -- including newly added or frequently changed data.

online product catalogs
Thunderstone supports very large, high-volume online catalogs that contain unstructured text (product names, narrative descriptions, etc.) and structured content (styles/sizes, prices, current in-stock availability status, etc.,) giving online shoppers the ability to search by item description, to navigate by price range or to efficiently do both in combination.

vertical portals
Market niche specialists, non-profit organizations and other uniquely-focused subject matter experts have turned to Thunderstone for affordable, easy-to-implement search tools with the power, versatility and scalability demanded by their vertical portal sites.

website searching
Happy customers around the world have discovered that websites (public-facing or internal) with many pages and lots of potentially valuable information will enjoy substantial benefits by adding the search advantages of Texis, Webinator or Thunderstone Search Appliances.

If you would like to share your own story about one or more effective ways that your organization has deployed Thunderstone search technology, please call +1 216 820 2200 or send an email to

Next month's edition of this newsletter will include a look at how the U.S. General Services Administration uses Thunderstone Search Appliances in its Unisys ClearPath Mainframe environment to handle different types of searching on a popular GSA auction site for selling excess and surplus government furniture, office products, scientific equipment, heavy machinery, airplanes, vessels, vehicles, etc.

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“We use a Thunderstone Search Appliance to search our company intranet. All the customization options are great. It has been a very valuable product to us. Overall, the product is very nice. And with all the customization options, we were able to make the search engine perform the way we wanted it to. Great job on delivering a great product.”

Jeremy Townsend
Programmer/Internet Analyst
Perdue Farms Inc.

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome to

June 2008 Newsletter

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

June 2008 - Archive

QUESTIONS ON SEARCH:
2008 Enterprise Search Summit Review

Thunderstone Software LLC, a Gold-Level Sponsor of the fifth annual Enterprise Search Summit in New York City, sent Peter Thusat (Chief Marketing Officer) and Fred Harmon (Chief Sales Officer) to meet with and hear from many of the search industry's leading experts, analysts, consultants, solution providers, resellers and end-users/customers representing a wide range of large, medium-sized and small organizations.

Although we witnessed a surprising level of overall collegiality and a definite feeling that "we're all in this together," by the end of the three days of intensive workshops, conference sessions, panel discussions, etc. -- some emerging areas of general concensus and stark disagreement among the active participants had become apparent.

AREAS OF GENERAL CONSENSUS

Keyword search alone does not work well enough to satisfy typical users in the enterprise.

Whether focusing on litigants engaged in e-discovery or employees looking for subject matter experts within their own globally dispersed teams, results improve dramatically when the deployed enterprise search solution can expand upon traditional keyword search capabilities with built-in tools that anticipate the data needs of users. For example, some of Thunderstone's enhanced product capabilities include concept-based search with a user-customizable thesaurus, parametric search with faceted or guided navigation based on targeted data fields/attributes/tags and real-time search of changing information with immediate data insertion that does not require any updating of the search index.

Mere novelty no longer translates into real-world sales in today's search marketplace.

Stephen Arnold (President of ArnoldIT.com) monitors approximately 300 companies that offer enterprise search solutions, and he said his colleague Susan Feldman (Research Vice President of IDC) tracks about 325 such companies. Arnold noted that these search companies have an average founding date of 1997, with newer entrants into the market fading away and going out of business at an ever-increasing pace. The lifespans of Thunderstone's search industry competitors continue to decline rapidly, as customers around the world eschew a dizzying array of cool new features with limited actual value to them in favor of well-proven solutions that can handle their actual needs for powerful, scalable and flexible information access/retrieval.

Most people cannot find important data that remains locked away in multiple silos.

Everybody seems to agree on the necessity of making ALL their data searchable, neglecting neither unstructured data nor structured data. Thunderstone pioneered the simultaneous searching of structured and unstructured data, and ongoing leadership related to this challenge continues as one of Thunderstone's core competencies. Also, personalization of search results has become recognized as an enterprise imperative -- both in terms of data security (allowing users to view only content which they have the proper credentials to see) and in terms of data findability (making the desired information searchable and usable in whatever manner best suits a person's particular work objectives at the moment.)

AREAS OF SHARP DISAGREEMENT

Taxonomists may or may not play an essential role for quite some time in enterprise search.

Speakers, panelists and audience members shared differing experiences and opinions on questions surrounding the issues of ontologies, user-generated metadata, social bookmarking, metadata standardization, automated tagging, the roles of taxonomists and other specialists, etc. The upshot? Don't look for absolute best practices where it may make more sense to identify the practice that simply works best today in your unique environment.

Should software facilitate or replace our need for expert assistance in finding good answers?

Some aspire to better enable users to quickly locate and contact an available expert to answer a specific query, because, they insist, people really want an accessible expert who can help them determine precisely what to do next. Others seek to eliminate as much wasted manual effort as possible and, instead, try to take maximum advantage of computing power to fully automate the way we solve information retrieval problems.

Don't blame search technology for mistakes due to understaffing.

Several presenters articulated their belief that an insufficient number of I.T. employees dedicated to managing/optimizing enterprise search deserves most of the blame for lingering user dissatisfaction. Administrators need help analyzing query logs, supporting users, conducting training, maintaining data security and more. Whether you do or don't see big staff additions on your team's horizon, either way -- Thunderstone's comprehensive maintenance and support program makes a huge difference.

To get your questions on search answered, please email .

Whenever It's Time To Upgrade Your Thunderstone Search Solution,
Thunderstone's Got Your Back With Product Investment Protection.

An important factor in determining your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) involves looking ahead and trying to figure out how much it may cost your organization when you decide in the future that you want to increase the size of your license, to expand the capacity of your current system and, in general, to step up into a larger search solution than you originally purchased. What will happen at that time to the initial investment you made in your search product? How, exactly, do you expect your anticipated upgrade path to work?

Thunderstone's entire line of search solutions come with a one-time, perpetual license. And we've made upgrading so easy and affordable that you'll probably wonder why everybody doesn't do it the same way.

The Thunderstone Product Investment Protection Program

If you ever get close to outgrowing your enterprise search solution from Thunderstone Software LLC, just ask for a quote on the Thunderstone product that can best accommodate your new requirements -- and you'll quickly discover some exciting facts about Thunderstone's Product Investment Protection Program, including:

Thunderstone will credit your total initial product investment towards the price of your new, larger Thunderstone license -- although there may be an additional cost to upgrade hardware, if required.
All of Thunderstone's search solutions automatically qualify for the investment protection program, and it doesn't matter which product or combination of products figure into your desired upgrade.

Most organizations have a rapidly-expanding quantity of data they need to make searchable in order for targeted stakeholders to accomplish their immediate and long-term objectives. As your search requirements grow, so should your search solution options -- without you worrying about the investment you already made in the past.

Thunderstone's customers can enjoy all the performance advantages of Texis, Webinator, Thunderstone Search Appliance and Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliance, along with a comprehensive Maintenance & Support Program plus the very substantial resource-maximizing benefits of the Thunderstone Product Investment Protection Program.

When it's time to upgrade, Thunderstone's got your back.

To find out more, email or call Thunderstone Sales today at +1 216 820 2200.

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome to

How Ariba built an enterprise-wide Knowledge Management system based on Texis

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

A major challenge in today's organization is being able to have a search that is flexible enough to search across all the repositories in the appropriate manner to build an enterprise-wide knowledge management system. In this article we look at how Ariba, Inc. created an enterprise-wide knowledge management system using Thunderstone's Texis as a search solution.

Ariba offers the world's leading Spend Management software and services to a wide range of customers that include people from all industries. It provides a set of both CD-based and on-demand software, along with services related to sourcing products and commodities, negotiating contracts, buying against negotiated contracts and other key components of a complete, end-to-end Spend Management solution. Ariba helps organizations analyze, understand and manage their spending in order to rapidly achieve sustainable cost savings and to improve business process efficiency.

Why knowledge management?

Derek Matthews, Ariba's Lead Knowledge Architect, was initially focused on their Professional Services organization and their implementation methodology. He wanted to be able to drive consistent best practices into every implementation engagement. During every engagement they would learn things and want to capture the assets and templates that were the best practices for each phase of a project engagement with the customer.

According to Matthews, “A key piece of knowledge management is searching. Process-wise, the first thing you do when you've got an issue in front of you is that you search our knowledge base to discover if your issue has already been addressed. Is there already a best practice out there that addresses what you're trying to do, or is there a content item out there that is immediately leverageable for what you're wanting to do? If none of those are the case, then we do what we call research. Research means having to dig really deep into content items and collaboration, discussion forums and all this sort of thing. And eventually maybe you'll find your solution on page 75, paragraph 4 of some technical document in combination with some other user guide and whatever else. Then the idea is to build a solution, put that into our knowledge base and enable other users around the globe to find it when searching. Researching is more costly than searching. So, we want to push everything forward to that less-costly searching process.”

Native Power and Flexibility of Thunderstone's TEXIS,

Ariba initially licensed Thunderstone Texis due to the availability of integration code from their content management system vendor who supported Texis because of the attribute storage and search available in Texis. The integration code turned out to be inefficient and was sluggish for Ariba's end users when pushed beyond its design. Because Thunderstone provides the ability to completely customize everything from the Texis databases to Vortex scripts, Ariba's software engineers developed their own integration with the content management system. The result was greatly improved efficiency with several customized interfaces that enabled users of the company's various portals to search for content items containing full text and file attachments plus all the associated metadata needed for efficient filtering, security and results sorting. Over time, Ariba built their current knowledge base. With every engagement it became smoother and smoother and smoother, and they are able to have everyone, globally, following the same process. And then from Professional Services implementation methodology it started growing into Sales and Marketing material, and then into Customer Support -- the entire CRM environment, engineering, HR, and eventually every department in Ariba got on-board with their Knowledge Management platform, and now they're all big users of it (Ariba has around 2,000 employees in North America, Europe, Asia/Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East).

As Matthews explains, “We started rolling out enhancement wave after enhancement wave and have continued that to this day. One of the latest enhancements that we've rolled out has been federated searching capabilities, what Thunderstone calls the meta-searching. We actually have portlets that we use on various portals across our extranet that allow people to pull together incongruent content based on metasearches that they want to perform. It is possible now, within the last year, for an Ariba employee to do a search and be able to pull a service request from our CRM system, a defect from our engineering quality system, a marketing presentation from our content management system, as well as searching any number of other internal web sites that have been indexed. You can search over all of the sources through one integrated portlet that we built on top of Thunderstone Texis.

“Texis allows Ariba to index widely varying content into a platform that can be securely accessed by users from various portals for our customers, partners, suppliers, prospects and employees. We are able to use the search engine to present dynamic, context-sensitive views of content for users to browse with the ability to refine through full-text searching.”

Customized Search Engine for Knowledge Management

Thunderstone has always believed in providing tools to users, letting them add the intelligence and knowledge they have in their field to the core tools Thunderstone provides, enabling the creation of powerful applications that can give a competitive advantage. By providing a SQL based database that is optimized for full-text searching in combination with traditional database attributes Thunderstone enables customers to use their existing expertise in database application creation and efficiently extend it into the world of search. Another benefit Thunderstone provides is the Texis Web Script language, known as Vortex. This is designed to allow developers to quickly create applications using the Texis database by providing a simple but powerful syntax and library. Customers can take Thunderstone's applications and modify them to suit their needs easily, while at the same time allowing Thunderstone to create new applications for customers, usually in a matter of days.

Matthews continued, “From a knowledge management perspective we were excited to get involved with Thunderstone, because what they brought to us was a completely customizable interface. A lot of companies, when you talk about knowledge management, tend to believe there's one out-of-the-box solution you can install that's going to solve all your problems with no customization. But, that's not reality. What Thunderstone allowed us to do was to completely look at any and every requirement that we have. With Thunderstone Texis we get a platform that we can customize down to the most technical level.

“With many search engine solutions on the market you basically install their software, point it at a URL and say 'go index that data.' And that's fine. For some situations that's no problem. But in our case we need to be able to customize, even down to the database level. We need to be able to modify how this Texis database works. We need to make modifications to the Vortex scripts that go out and search for content so that they can make certain metadata changes based on certain conditions that might be present. Those Vortex scripts need to be able to combine text from within attached files together with the metadata describing that document in addition to the full text that might be within those files. For example, there will be categorization that's tied to those files. There will be filtering tags that are applied, as well as security tags that get applied.

“The last piece is critical. We need to be able to fully customize the interface to our search engine in a secure manner. If you're a customer accessing our search engine, we want to be able to allow you to search all of the content that we provide to every customer as well as the content that's provided to you specifically as a customer. Maybe it's a benchmark report that we want you to be able to see. But, at the same time, we don't want to allow you to search against a benchmark report for another customer. Security is very important. We're allowing you to search the content that you, depending on whatever attributes you have as a company, are able to see. If you bought a certain product, we may want you to be able to search content for that product, but we don't want you to get bogged down searching content for another product that you don't even own. It's useful both from a filtering for ease of use perspective as well as a security perspective -- both equally important aspects.

“Thunderstone's ability to customize based on those very, very specific requirements that we had made it a great choice, because at each level we are able to make it do exactly what we want it to do. With Thunderstone Texis you have the option of using it right out of the box, one size fits all, just install it and run. However, and this is what I think so many people don't realize out in the industry, Texis also enables a level of customization that lets you go down to the 'nth degree' depending on whatever your requirements are.”

“I am amazed at the whole design of the engine itself. It really is powerful. Thunderstone doesn't get enough credit, and I've never quite understood why. When it comes to customizing the database, customizing the indexing and how that works, and customizing the user interface -- those three things -- I have not seen any of Thunderstone's competitors demonstrate the ability to hit all three of those the way Thunderstone does and with the depth that Thunderstone does,” said Matthews.

Starting with a flexible and easily customized search solution from Thunderstone Software in one area of the business, Ariba has been able to deploy an enterprise-wide search based knowledge management system by extending it application by application, incorporating the specific knowledge from each part of the organization, all using the same core skill sets.

Thunderstone Blog: Customized Search Engine & Search Software

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April 2008 Newsletter

April 2008 - Archive

CONTENTS

QUESTIONS ON SEARCH

HAPPENINGS

SAVE $200 ON ATTENDENCE AT THE ENTERPRISE SEARCH SUMMIT IN NEW YORK CITY

AN ENTERPRISE SEARCH TOOL SELF-CHECK UP

NEW UPGRADE OPTIONS OFFERED FOR THUNDERSTONE'S MAINTENANCE & SUPPORT PROGRAM

TECH TIPS: EQUIVALENCE FILES AKA THESAURUS OR SYNONYMS

July 2008 Newsletter

July 2008 - Archive

CONTENTS

QUESTIONS ON SEARCH

NEWS HAPPENINGS

How Do You Use Search In Your Enterprise?

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

June 2008 Newsletter

June 2008 - Archive

CONTENTS

QUESTIONS ON SEARCH:2008 Enterprise Search Summit Review

Whenever It's Time To Upgrade Your Thunderstone Search Solution,Thunderstone's Got Your Back With Product Investment Protection.

How Ariba built an enterprise-wide Knowledge Management system based on Texis

QUESTIONS ON SEARCH:
2008 Enterprise Search Summit Review

Whenever It's Time To Upgrade Your Thunderstone Search Solution,
Thunderstone's Got Your Back With Product Investment Protection.