Google Search Appliance Faces Tough Competition from Multiple Rivals

Although Google is one of the most recognizable companies in the field of enterprise search, many corporations have recently joined the growing niche with product offerings that look to take on the search giant head on. GSA competitors include many free, software-based enterprise search solutions in additions to companies that engineer highly sophisticated search appliance hardware that in some cases brings even more to the table the comparable Google offerings.

Software-Based Google Enterprise Competition

Setting up an enterprise search solution for your business can be technically challenging and a large, compounding expense. Although many companies are directly challenging Google Search Appliance with dedicated hardware search appliance offerings, others choose to provide software-only based enterprise search solutions that are free and open source. Apache Lucene, Jumper 2.0, OpenSearchServer and Sphinx are just a few of these types of Google Search Appliance competitors available at no cost that carry open source. Software-only enterprise search solutions, however, have a set of downfalls. Because software-only solutions must be installed on multitask computers that aren’t specifically optimized to run their functions, they typically do not provide the same performance benchmarks as enterprise search solutions that are aided by search appliance hardware. Additionally, software-based setups can be technically challenging and despite their free availability, they can also require third-party technical consulting which can be accompanied with costs as high as or higher than that of search appliances.

Search Appliance Engineers Create Formidable Competition for Google’s GSA

Google Search Appliance is one of the more well-known search appliances on the market simply because of the widespread recognition of the Google brand itself. With the aid of dedicated hardware devices built by Dell and Google’s own specifically engineered software, it is hard to find quality competition for Google Enterprise. Some companies have recently been gaining notoriety, however, and become a serious threat with search appliances that not only cost up to thousands less than the Google competition, but also outperform in terms of query speed, document limit and added features. Two of the more notable search appliances on the market right now include the Thunderstone Search Appliance APP 250 and the MaxxCAT Ex-5000. Both offerings are targeted at large business just as the GSA, but each has significantly lower startup costs. Both Thunderstone and MaxxCAT provide appliances that beat the competition in categories such as document limit and query speed, with the higher performance ratings belonging to MaxxCAT’s EX-5000. Whatever the size and specific need of your business, there are many options to choose from to install a successful enterprise search solution for your data storage and recovery needs.