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As a result, the typical information worker now spends up to a quarter of his or her day searching for the right information to complete a given task." This, explains Edwards, is why some organisations could be frittering away as much as 10% of their staff costs on wasted effort.

Butler Group maintains that effective search and discovery is core to competitiveness and service delivery, and that Enterprise Search and Retrieval technologies are required by organisations of all sizes and across all industries. "Search and Retrieval solutions enable organisations to exploit the information assets they already have." says Sue Clark, the report's co-author and Senior Research Analyst at Butler Group. "They also enable companies to identify opportunities, reduce risk, and garner insight."

Getting the right information to the right person at the right time is essential for the agile and flexible organisation

Enterprise Search and Retrieval solutions clearly enable organisations to exploit their corporate information assets, but the report also points out that these solutions can also enhance an organisation's ability to manage compliance and regulatory demands. For example, US dealing organisations must, on demand, provide copies of all electronic records, including e-mails, to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) within 48 hours. Accomplishing this to the satisfactory of the regulator is nigh-on impossible without the help of Search and Discovery tools.

The 240-page report compares search solutions from eight leading Enterprise Search vendors and highlights the differences in their strategies, implementation options, and market approach. "There is confusion about the roles of different search technologies." says Clarke. "Organisations must realise that Enterprise Search requires a range of indexing techniques and functions to deliver the most appropriate results, and no single technology can deliver all the analysis required."

Enterprise Content Management vendors currently dominate the Enterprise Information Search and Retrieval market

Enterprise Content Management vendors have dominated the early adoption phase of the Enterprise Search and Retrieval market. This is due, in part, to the growing demand for Document Management, Records Management, and Web Content Management systems, deployments of which often tend to include integrated search facilities that have been licensed from pure-play search vendors. However, Butler Group's Edwards predicts a shake-up in the market: "In recent months, Business Intelligence (BI) vendors, such as Business Objects, Cognos, Information Builders and SAS, have been integrating their wares with solutions from Autonomy, FAST, IBM, Google, and others. This has led to speculation that an acquisition might be imminent here, and that search technology could finally unite the otherwise separate worlds of structured and unstructured information."

As well as providing a side-by-side comparison of the leading Enterprise Search and Retrieval solutions on the market, Butler Group's report reveals how these solutions can deliver real business benefits and improve competitive advantage. The report also highlights why Enterprise Search and Retrieval technologies are essential for compliance; where these technologies should be positioned within the organisation's IT framework; and how search and discovery can be utilised through Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) to enhance portals and line-of-business applications.

Market forces, and the continuing trend for technology commoditisation, will eventually result in just a few vendors dominating the ESR landscape

"Google's move into the corporate market with the Google Search Appliance has redefined the technology landscape." says Edwards. "Within two years we could finally see Google just as much at home in the enterprise as it is on the Web." However, the Butler Group report points out that both IBM and Microsoft have each announced all-encompassing search strategies, and that their grip on enterprise infrastructure will make these companies very hard to beat in the long run. The report is one of the first to investigate Microsoft's latest SharePoint offering, and assess the impact this product is likely to have on the Enterprise Content Management and BI markets.

Andy Kellett, Senior Research Analyst at Butler Group, sums up the Enterprise Search market by saying, "To date, the pure-play Enterprise Search and Retrieval (ESR) market has been dominated by niche players, and this is certainly reflected in the Outperform category of the Butler Group Market Lifecycle Ratings for the early adopter stage. During the Market Adoption stage, consolidation in the search market will intensify, and there is the potential that pure-play search vendors will be acquired by large vendors who will then embed the technology into applications that search across all structured and unstructured data sources within the enterprise."