“Enterprise Search” is dead – Long live "Information Organization & Access”?

Gartner expects the total software revenue for worldwide information access with search technology will realize double-digit percent growth in 2007, surpassing $728 million--a 15 percent increase from 2006's $633 million--according to the Gartner report, "Dataquest Insight: Forecast for Information Access With Search Technology in the Enterprise, 2006-2011.”

There is a growing recognition in the industry that what matters is not how searchable you make your information, but how findable.  The emphasis here lies less on the latest algorithm, and more on the success of your information management regimen and your capacity to incorporate an effective user experience into the search process.

Search is not just search anymore, and Gartner has in recent years been using the term “Information access technology” to include and expand on what they previously called "enterprise search technology”. They use the term information access to include a collection of technologies to help you find information, such as;

• enterprise search;
• content classification, categorization and clustering;
• fact and entity extraction;
• taxonomy creation and management;
• information presentation (for example visualization).

This is a useful expansion of the problem set, but we should keep in mind that many of the tools around extraction, classification, and categorization remain supplementary to the essential professional task of organizing information.

There are three main ways in which people look for information:

1. Pattern Matching (aka search) – same physical attributes of the sought after information, it contains words or phrases, they exist in certain parts (e.g. title, author), certain words exists close to each other (e.g. clustering), etc.
2. Semantic Web Navigation, or traversal – knowing of a relevant asset that is linked to other assets, traverse the links looking at related information; sometimes with weighted links.
3. Classified or Categorized, that is organized by topic browsing. – This is where we use classification taxonomies and related structured organizations of information.

Note that only the first approach relies exclusively on "search."  However, the line between search and browse (either by link or by structure) is getting blurrier every day, as clustering and guided navigation enable new ways for enterprises to facilitate useful access to large repositories.  At the end of the day, all three approaches rely heavily on metadata.  Clearly, to access information properly, first you need to organize it properly.

Members of AIIM's Education Advisory Groups in Europe and US have therefore recommended using the term "Information Organization & Access" (IOA) instead of just Information Access.  And perhaps more importantly, they have identified as a priority the development the professional skills around the organization of information such that enterprises can make it more readily accessible to further their business objectives. This new IOA training programs will be ready September 2007, and more information about learning objectives and agenda is available from AIIM's website:
http://www.aiim.org/education/IOA-program.asp

By Atle Skjekkeland.