IBM and Yahoo are teaming up to offer a free enterprise search tool likely to challenge Google’s server appliances and alternatives that typically charge thousands of pounds for similar capabilities.

Called IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition, the tool looks like Yahoo at the front end and can be installed on intranet servers, web servers, file servers or other general-purpose hosts. Enterprise data searches look and feel like Yahoo web searches but without advertising links, while the same tool can be used to search the web but will show ads. Up to 500,000 documents or web pages can be indexed with over 200 document types and 30 different languages supported.

IBM sees the free release as a way to seed the market for more scalable products that can delve into even more aspects of an organisation’s information stores.

“The ultimate goal is selling more high-end software,” said Marc Andrews, programme director for strategy at IBM’s information management group. “It might start out with basic search but ultimately you need to be hooking into all enterprise capabilities including content management systems and databases. Google did a good job of recognising a gap in the market but basic search capabilities are something everybody needs to get started and have become commoditised.”

Although the software will be available as a free download, IBM will charge for telephone support. However, some analysts said OmniFind could still shake up enterprise search.

“We believe that this could be highly disruptive in the enterprise search space,” wrote Mike Davis of Ovum in a research note.

“[This release] is squarely aimed at the market targeted by Google with its Search Appliance (GSA) and Mini, and Microsoft with its Office 2007 SharePoint Server for Search (MOSS). A key selling point for the GSA is the use of the same search interface as used on the Google.com web site. By partnering with Yahoo, IBM has taken exactly the same approach, providing a tried, tested and refined interface.”

Content management analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe of CMS Watch said, “It’s becoming common that people want Google-like functionality on their desktop. However, Google was designed to look for content that wants to be found [and] has been authored and tagged that way. Enterprise search tools have a very different challenge looking for largely unstructured and very sparsely tagged content. In teaming up with Yahoo on this, IBM gives true enterprise search but with a look and familiarity that typical users will like.”

Search expert Danny Sullivan said, “It’s a free offering so I’m sure it will build some share.”