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Google has announced "Google OneBox," an extension to its search appliance that enables it to retrieve data from various enterprise applications like Cognos and Salesforce.com. Prominently missing are SAP and Microsoft, two big important sources of enterprise content -- who are feverishly working on their own search technologies. OneBox also introduces a developer API for building connectors to other applications, much like you can with the major pure-play search vendors. For enterprise deployments, this makes sense, but each new step to accomodate the heterogeneous collections of enterprise repositories makes Google's product less of a plug-and-play appliance and more like the complex search technologies Google is trying to replace. Enterprise search is hard, folks...

In a brief press release Swedish CMS vendor ElektroPost today announced that they have signed a partnership agreement with search giant Google. Under the agreement Elektropost will integrate their flagship Web CMS, "EPiServer" with the Google Search Appliance to "provide the same level of search as google.com on their own Web sites." This early partnership likely presages more to come between Google and other CMS vendors. Google does a fine job of searching websites (but searching enterprise content is a different story -- consult The Enterprise Search Report for details), and hungry CMS vendors will want to try to hitch a ride on Google's star. Google should be happy to get more traction on in Scandinavia, home turf of enterprise search competitor FAST.

CMS Watch evaluates vendors for a living. But what if we turned our gaze on our own predictions? Well, our recent predictions for 2008 reminded me that a year ago, we made 12 similar forecasts for 2007. Let's look back to see how we did. Google de-googles its appliance - Nope AJAX UI backlash - Sort of Web managers embracing the delete key - Definitely She's got the power: the web marketing manager ascendant - Not yet Website simulations finally arrive - No Falling seat prices - Yes Taking a second look at your repository - Yes Rediscovery of workflow - Sort of Portal platforms will diversify - Yes Portal dashboards meet standards - Sort of Long live (lightweight) SOA - Not yet You will need to explain Text Mining - Not Yet

Today we released the Enterprise Search Report 2008, evaluating 18 major search vendors. We'll be discussing more about different marketplace trends and vendors in the coming weeks. For now, our initial release focuses on the stunted promise of hosted search, as customers look to appliances for simpler needs, and more sophisticated, on-premise solutions for connecting to enterprise repositories. You can download a free chapter, which includes our (I think rather path-breaking) review of Google's Search Appliance. If you are a full subscriber, you should receive your copy shortly; if you're a previous report buyer, you'll receive an e-mail a bit later this week outlining discount eligibility.

Google Analytics releases can be depended upon to change expectations on what web analytics packages should all be able to do. If you're one of the other analytics vendors, you have to make sure your product does at least everything that Google Analytics can do...plus some.So, with this in mind, the new release is quite interesting, because internal search and Web 2.0 content tracking and reporting are among the introduced features.While all analytics vendors enable site search analytics at some level, it's not always obvious how to collect the data or see the reports.

Everybody loves a party, and Web Analytics vendor Omniture is no exception, using their annual summit to announce the release of SiteCatalyst 14 and a truckload of other news, including a partnership with Baidu and the roll out of the combined Touchclarity/Offermatica offering.If you have SiteCatalyst, you probably are now just getting familiar with the new release. So, what do you think of it?I received a briefing last week, and certainly the new Ajax interface jumped out as a big improvement...13.5 was getting tiresome to look at, especially when compared to Google Analytics, IndexTools, and Nedstat.

Although available for two years in North America, Google's enterprise search product, the Google "Appliance," could heretofore not be purchased overseas -- presumably for intellectual property reasons and a desire to minimize risks before the company's major IPO. Now the appliance is available in the UK and other European countries where the company has significant market penetration for public web search. Of course, as CMS Watch Enterprise Search Report buyers know, there is a significant difference between searching public webpages with an emphasis on (among other things) link density to determine result relevancy, versus searching heterogeneous enterprise content. Google's appliance still needs some work, but now it will get tested in more places... Read BBC's Review of the Appliance

Cloud computing remains a promising solution to the challenges of on-premises installation of enterprise applications. The increasing interest in software as a service (SaaS) as a way to control some information technology costs is evident in the Google/Salesforce.com tie-up.For those of you unfamiliar with the jargon and the players in the growing trend to shift from traditional on-premises software to cloud-based software, let’s work through some terminology.First, cloud computing means that an application sits on a server in a data center. The twist is that the software vendor assumes responsibility for maintaining the application and ensuring quality of service. The company using a cloud-based service pays a monthly fee. The burden on the company’s in-house information technology staff is greatly reduced. The idea is a variation of outsourcing to reduce certain costs.

With every vendor acquisition, and the uncertainty this brings for existing customers, I see self-perceived competitors step in with cut-rate offers to "upgrade" to their technology. But I was still surprised to see Google, in a rather bold move, try to lure some Microsoft and Fast Search & Transfer customers away after the recent announcement that the two would become one.I remember in a panel discussion I was moderating at cmf2007, Exalead CEO François Bourdoncle mentioned the goal of his company was to create a solution "that allows for quick implementations," but of course, with a nod to his competitors, "we don't say fast." So when an enterprise search vendor does mention "fast," they really do mean "FAST." And when Google introduces the "make a fast switch to Google" program, they really mean to say "make a switch from FAST to Google

Last month, Apache member Brian McAllister proposed a new incubation project called Shindig, which would create an open source implementation of OpenSocial. OpenSocial is Google & Co's much hyped response to Facebook, offering a new common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. To quote the interesting Shindig proposal:A social application, in this context, is an application run by a third party provider and embedded in a web page, or web application, which consumes services provided by the container and by the application host. This is very similar to Portal/Portlet technology, but is based on client-side compositing, rather than server.Perhaps as a surprise to some, in particular outsiders to Apache, Shindig and Jetspeed (the official Apache Portal Project) are not connected in any way. For Apache this is the usual way of working: innovative, but often disconnected projects sometimes overlap or supercede each other

The announcement to make Yahoo! IndexTools a free service, coming so quickly on the heels of the acquisition, would seem to serve notice to Omniture, Google Analytics, and other market leaders, such as Nedstat, Coremetrics', Unica, and WebTrends' about the seriousness of Yahoo!'s intentions.Eric Peterson has written a very thoughtful post that delves into the market implications on this latest move. But from a customer perspective, this could become a bit confusing in the short term. According to IndexTool's Dennis Mortensen, current customers were contacted to let them know they'd be able to continue using the service at no cost if they sign forthcoming agreement from Yahoo!. Details about the agreement and how this impacts current customization projects is still being sorted out, as is how long customers will have to determine if they want to accept the terms.