EMC provides a touch of Google

Addition should make it easier to search unstructured data

EMC last week said it is to integrate Google’s desktop search capabilities with its own content management tools, to make it easier for users to search unstructured data. The announcement follows industry experts’ comments that firms are under pressure to incorporate more consumer-style technologies into business systems.

EMC said integrating Google’s Desktop for Enterprise product with its own federated search system – Documentum Enterprise Content Integration Services (ECIS), – will increase the ability to search data on workers’ desktops.

The new version of ECIS is due to ship at the end of March.

Dave Gingell of EMC said the move will allow Documentum and ECIS users to search unstructured data, such as Word documents and emails, kept on hard drives. And they will be able to import data into Documentum where they gain content management functionality. “It also means the Google Desktop interface can be used to search corporate content accessed via ECIS, such as data held in the intranet, subscription services, or business applications,” he added.

EMC has previously added links from ECIS to Google’s web-based search and Search Appliance, to extend Documentum’s ability to find content inside the enterprise as well as outside.

The latest move is part of a trend that has seen many software vendors enhance the usability of their products. “Information management systems used to be departmental, but we’re reaching a level of maturity where we need to drive functionality out to end-users,” said Gingell. “That means focus on ease of use is becoming more prevalent.”

However, industry experts argued that despite this shift many legacy IT systems still lag behind consumer technologies in terms of usability. As a result, many IT directors are being pressured by staff to improve the usability of applications they need for work.

Speaking before EMC’s announcement at a round table organised by Adobe, James Bennet, dir- ector of the technology communications and entertainment group at auditing firm Ernst & Young, said many staff are unhappy that it is often easier to find documents on their home PC using Google’s free desktop search technology than it is to undertake the same task at work. Similarly, the recent upgrade to Google’s Gmail service, offering up to 2GB of storage capacity for free, is putting pressure on enterprises to match these levels, Bennnett added.

Azeem Azhar, head of innovation at Reuters, commented, “If you come to work playing computer games on a PSP, and you turn up and log onto an Oracle enterprise application, with its hideous screen and terrible session management, your brain is necessarily going to draw the comparison. It’s not surprising that people’s demands are starting to go up.”

But experts warned that installing consumer technology at work could create problems for IT departments by increasing support requirements and security risks.

“I’m sure the CIO at Ernst & Young would argue that allowing everyone to download everything would just create a living nightmare,” said Bennet.

However, Bennet added that to increase staff productivity, IT managers need to investment more in new tools that offer the ease of use and innovation currently associated with consumer technologies.