Today Yahoo & IBM unveiled OmniFind Yahoo Edition, an unstructured search for enterprise. The product, which relies on Yahoo’s basic web search, is made free and downloadable to the public. As Yahoo and IMB VPs explained in a preview on Monday, you can download it to your laptop easily and it will begin indexing your files right away–although it’s meant for a server.
OmniFind Yahoo Edition will index 500K file documents gratis, and customers can increase the file capacity with a paid upgrade. Other features include a customizable search screen, as well as the ability to create synonyms and to highlight documents. Upgrades are also available to integrate IBM’s more advanced enterprise solutions– which include taxonomies and other advanced features.
As mentioned, the system relies on Yahoo search. The index was developed from the opensource Lucene, mixed with IBM’s internal OmniFind technology. “The software uses the Lucene search library and UIMA is also used in the software, however UIMA is not exposed, meaning people can’t actively use the UIMA annontators to connect other software.” There will also be synchronization issues when combining the Yahoo and the IBM results– the partnering companies say they’re already working it.
Battelle posted an excerpt from the press release of this exciting announcement. And ZDnet has a comparison between OmniFind and Google’s Enterprise, its competitor.
I hope it works better than the google mini – the relevancy is terrible. They obviously don’t use their own algorithm for enterprise search.
You’re mistaken about UIMA in the Yahoo Edition in Omnifind. It is in the software, per the developer’s blog and an IBM spokesperson who confirmed via email that with me yesterday.
This is really cool. I am downloading now. It will be interesting.
Thanks