There have been numerous questions posed with the sunset of Google Search Appliance (GSA) at the end of 2018, especially for organizations who depend on the platform for enterprise search and for search functionality on their public-facing websites. Combined with the popularity of cloud-deployed solutions, this presents a unique challenge for organizations looking to replace their legacy GSA implementation.

To answer questions about the future of GSA, we held an informative webinar around what’s next, including strategies for transitioning search solutions, best practices for platform replacement, and Perficient’s own solution, Nero. Here are some of the highlights:

The Status of Google Search Appliance

Depending on which search platform your organization is using, support will end in either March or December 2018. For organizations running Google Site Search (GSS), support ends March 31 and GSS reverts to Google Custom Search. Google Search Appliance users will simply see their platforms shut down.

What’s happening with @Google search? This graphic should help you. #webinar #tech #cloud pic.twitter.com/AjhAY8MnOU

— Perficient Integrate (@PRFT_Integrate) February 20, 2018

Considerations Matter for Next Steps

With the sunset of both platforms, technology executives face lingering questions for next steps. How next steps are made depend an organization’s strategic direction, budget, technology, and independence. In essence, you can spend a lot of time designing your own solution or adopt a new solution. One way or another, there are pros and cons to each.

Fourth Consideration: Independence

Do you want a #search appliance solution that you can build and maintain yourself, or set it and forget it? There are pros and cons to each. #tech

— Perficient Integrate (@PRFT_Integrate) February 20, 2018

There are Many Solutions on the Market

Like many technology areas today, search is no stranger to budding competition. Numerous platforms also have their own strengths, including advanced content analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and more. A sample of what is available is seen below:

Here’s an example of some search platforms on the market right now. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses, including #AI, #analytics, #content, and more. pic.twitter.com/JePYaZefdU

— Perficient Integrate (@PRFT_Integrate) February 20, 2018

Introducing Nero, by Perficient

One solution on the market is Perficient’s own platform, Nero. Similar to the GSA platform, Nero offers direct API access, modern display, customized results sharing, and quick setup in under 30 days. Additionally, the platform is open source and scalable, creating unlimited search possibilities for organizations. You can see more information in the tweets below:

Nero is… pic.twitter.com/HcNQeISD1w

— Perficient Integrate (@PRFT_Integrate) February 20, 2018

Why Nero?

See some of the reasons below. There are opportunities to scale your search appliance at enterprise grade. pic.twitter.com/qv6VnsKGIT

— Perficient Integrate (@PRFT_Integrate) February 20, 2018

On the back side, Nero has many different features. Here’s a preview: pic.twitter.com/UuWhGXOv1A

— Perficient Integrate (@PRFT_Integrate) February 20, 2018

Going From Here

With Nero, you have full control of your web search and the power to move forward from the sunset of GSA. If you have more questions about your transition, meet us at Elastic{ON} in San Francisco next week, February 27 – March 1st or reach out for a conversation with one of our specialists at www.perficient.com.

Nero is Perficient’s solution for customers looking for a Google Search Appliance (GSA) replacement. Built on open source technology by Perficient’s experienced enterprise search practice, Nero is positioned as the best product on the market for customers looking to rip and replace the GSA once it goes out of support in 2019.

These five reasons explain why.

1. Priced to sell. Nero is competitively priced at a rate comparable to the GSA. Customers should not have to budget extra for Nero. In most cases, the GSA was inexpensive compared to other solutions on the market. We aim to match that.
2. Includes a GSA compatibility layer. Out of the box features enable output of search results in GSA-compliant XML format. In cases where organizations have integrated the GSA into their websites, this could help simplify the transition off the GSA. Our solution has additional compatibility features in the product development pipeline for 2018 including integration with Google Connector Manager v3 and v4.
3. Offers flexible deployment models, including on the cloud. Nero is compatible with leading cloud service providers including the Google Cloud Platform, AWS, and Microsoft Azure. In keeping with GSA standards, it can also be deployed on-premises.
4. Elasticsearch underpinnings. The popular open source Elasticsearch engine is the foundation we built on. With Elasticsearch under the hood, Nero is capable of extremely efficient search with nearly unlimited scalability.
5. Typical customers are up and running in 30 days or less. Nero is fast and easy to deploy. It is packaged for rapid rollout and is quickly configurable, enabling crawling to start almost immediately. Perficient’s award-winning implementation team will be there with you every step of the way to ensure a painless transition.

Find it With Nero

Nero brings instant value to your organization through competitive price, GSA compatibility, flexible deployment, open source roots, and rapid deployment model. If you are in search of a replacement for the GSA, look no further. Reach out to us and schedule a demo today.

Want to Learn More?

As a Google Strategic Partner with a leading GSA practice, Perficient is uniquely positioned to deliver value to customers transitioning off GSA. With this in mind, Perficient is conducting a free public webinar on  February 20, 2018 to address the challenges in the enterprise search space and to introduce Nero, Perficient’s product for website search. Sign up on the form below and join us!

Google decided to sunset the Google Search Appliance over the next several years, leaving a gap in the enterprise search space for organizations dependent on it for their public website search and secure internal search. New hardware sales stopped in 2017, license renewals for Google Search Appliance customers phase out in 2018, and support ends in 2019.

Introducing Nero. The Logical Solution for Customers Replacing the Google Search Appliance.

Nero is Perficient’s solution for customers looking to replace the Google Search Appliance. Built on open source search and analytics technology, Nero delivers a modern search platform with minimal setup and flexible deployment options at an affordable price. In order to facilitate a fast and easy transition, Nero also allows for output of search results in Google Search Appliance compliant XML format.

Fast, Simple, Website Search.

Nero brings everything users have come to expect from a modern search engine – real-time suggestions, facets, advanced filtering, wildcard search, “did you mean?” spell-check, dynamic results display, and speedy performance. The Nero Admin Portal provides system administrators and developers with an intuitive interface for configuration, monitoring, and reporting. Nero is built on Elasticsearch, a popular open source search and analytics engine. Elasticsearch APIs crawl, index, and store data with performance in mind. These components enable Nero to be easy to use, highly scalable, and incredibly fast.

The Cloud Awaits.

Nero is cloud-ready and compatible with leading cloud service providers such as Google Cloud Platform, AWS, and Microsoft Azure. In keeping with Google Search Appliance standards, Nero can also be deployed on-premises or in a hybrid-cloud model. Flexible deployment options allow Nero to meet customer requirements around security and regulatory compliance.

Up and Running in 30 Days or Less.

Typical customers are up and running on Nero in 30 days or less, with product support included as part of Perficient’s subscription-based software licensing model. The standard implementation road map consists of phases for installation, crawling and indexing configuration, website integration, testing, and training.

Find it with Nero.

Nero provides a powerful search platform that is easily configurable and customizable to meet your organization’s needs. With open source roots, Nero brings together the latest and greatest in open source and proprietary technology in order to deliver quality search at a competitive price point.

Want to Learn More?

As a Google Strategic Partner with a leading Enterprise Search practice, Perficient is uniquely positioned to deliver value to customers transitioning off the Google Search Appliance. With this in mind, Perficient is conducting a free public webinar on February 20, 2018 to address the challenges in the enterprise search space and to introduce Nero, Perficient’s product for website search. Sign up at the form below to get access.

Are you looking at replacing the Google Search Appliance? With Google’s upcoming sunset of the hardware-based enterprise search product, organizations dependent on it for public website search and secure internal search need to evaluate potential replacements. License renewals end in 2018, leaving customers with limited time to develop a replacement plan going forward. Customers evaluating future investment in enterprise search after the Google Search Appliance will want to consider the following questions as they shape their replacement strategies.

Replacing the Google Search Appliance? Answer these Questions First.

What is your budget?

It should go without saying, but your budget is first thing to think about as you shape your strategy for replacing the Google Search Appliance. The marketplace is saturated with enterprise search solutions at a wide range of price points. Your budget will determine which products you can afford and allow you to quickly narrow your search.

Which deployment model best fits your organization?

The Google Search Appliance is on-premises only, but demand for cloud-based deployment models is high. Consider whether the cloud is right for your organization. Some industries have prohibitive compliance and security requirements that favor on-premises only or a hybrid-cloud configuration, so consider these options as well.

Are your search needs simple or cognitive?

Simple search relies on standard search engine features to deliver an intuitive user experience. Cognitive adds bells and whistles like machine learning to the equation. Because of this, cognitive search products are often a better fit for customized implementations and complex use cases, but generally come with a higher price tag than simple search products.

Is Google Search Appliance compatibility important?

If you integrated the Google Search Appliance into your organization’s website or built custom features on top of it, you might want to account for these components in your replacement strategy. A compatible replacement could help ease your transition.

Do you need public website search, secure intranet search, or both?

If all you need is a search bar for your public website, you should consider that in your replacement search. On the other hand, you should evaluate whether or not you need permissions-based secure search for your enterprise-wide intranet. These requirements will likely shape your budget and schedule.

What is your timeline for finding a replacement?

Your schedule is important. Are you at quickly ripping out and replacing the Google Search Appliance? Or can you afford a more drawn out project with tailored design, integration, and customization?

Next Steps

If you can answer these high-level questions, you should be able to quickly narrow down a short list of solution alternatives. From there, consider contacting vendors to request demos for the solutions that line up with your needs. Happy searching!

Want to Learn More?

As a Google Strategic Partner with a leading Google Search Appliance practice, Perficient is uniquely positioned to deliver value to customers transitioning off the Google Search Appliance. With this in mind, Perficient is conducting a free public webinar on February 20, 2018 to address the challenges in the enterprise search space and to introduce Nero, Perficient’s product for website search. Please sign up on the form below.

When Google announced the end of the Google Search Appliance (GSA), the other major players in the space rapidly put together their messaging on why their product was the perfect replacement for the GSA. They espoused their cognitive search, machine learning, 360-degree view UIs, etc.

The competitive landscape has focused on the large enterprise search customers indexing dozens of information sources with complex security models and millions of documents.  They have their “why me” pitches down to an art. They focus on how much more relevant the results will be due to their sophisticated analytics and how the owners of search will have beautiful dashboards showing query response times, relevancy success, the effectiveness of related searches helping users find what they want, all available with one click. But, I have been on countless demos with every vendor in the space hoping to grab their share of the GSA replacement pie, and failed to see any of them address one of largest use cases of the GSA install base – low maintenance public website search at a price point comparable with the GSA.

The reality is over 70% of the GSA install base has the smallest available license allowing for a 500K document index.  And that index was almost always massively underutilized.  Why? Over 50% of the customers use their GSAs as a public website search tool, which is traditionally a low index/high query volume use case. So why did these customers opt for the GSA in the first place?

1. Low ongoing maintenance: Marketing departments owned the solution. IT departments loved it, they could point the GSA to crawl all corporate web domains, set-up OOTB functionality similar to search results on Google.com and the Google algorithms kicked in and did the rest. Marketing loved it because they were not dependent on IT. They could do simple things such as add synonyms and key matches themselves.  It was a win-win for everyone.
2. Costs: Most customers went for the Prod, Hot Back-up, Development configuration which cost approximately $44K per annum, based on a 3-year deal. The GSA was a great value.
3. Functionality: Google was smart. They always ensured GSA OOTB functionality pretty much mirrored the look and feel of results on Google.com. The comment we always hear from customers when evaluating a public website search tool is that they want search results to look like Google.com.

It is this segment of the GSA customer base that is struggling most finding a next generation replacement.  The top tier of potential replacement platforms are too feature-rich and cost prohibitive for those looking for a traditional website search similar to Google.com.  At the other end of the spectrum, the open source options require IT resources to provide ongoing tuning to keep the relevancy fresh, thus taking day to day administration away from the marketing department.

The Search team at Perficient has heard this feedback from numerous customers. The gap in the market is clear, and based on conversations we have had with other search partners, none of them has a like for like replacement in their roadmap. With this in mind, we set out to develop a viable alternative for our customers needing a replacement.  With the blessing of Google, Perficient has developed Nero, a search solution leveraging the GSA connector framework built on Elasticsearch and other open source software. Nero is available as both an on-prem and cloud solution (Google Cloud, of course). The Admin panel has been developed with the business owner in mind, allowing for minimal support from corporate IT.  Pricing is based on an annual subscription, including support for approximately the same price as the GSA.

Still trying to find your GSA replacement for public website search? Perficient will be hosting a public webinar on Feb 20^th at 1:00 CST that will include a demo of Nero. To register, please complete the form below or visit http://www2.perficient.com/webinar/What-is-Next-After-the-Google-Search-Appliance.

Last month I wrote a blog, “7 Tips to Prep for a GSA Sunset”. I had several people reach out and suggest the need for a follow-up article covering areas of focus during an enterprise search migration. After giving it some thought, I came up with a list of less obvious considerations that can make the difference between a “good” and “great” enterprise search implementation:

1. If you are indexing your content via connectors, look at repurposing the connectors already in-place instead of developing or configuring new ones. The connectors currently in use will be fully, and hopefully successfully, integrated into your existing information sources. Explore the feasibility of just ripping and replacing the integration into the new search platform. This can lead to genuine cost and time savings when it comes to less popular information sources which do not have OOTB connectors available.
2. If your nexgen search platform involves a complete refresh, as opposed to a “rip and replace” strategy, include change management. In most corporations, enterprise search is accessed via the corporate intranet. Employees use search every day, and most perform a small number of the same searches again and again. The search result is like a comfortable pair of shoes. They know what they are getting before the results page is rendered. Then one day without warning it changes. Worse yet, not only has the look and feel changed, the expected result is no longer there. Imagine the panic and uncertainty. Such changes need to be messaged properly and well in advance
3. Key match! Key match! Key match! One of the last things you should do with the old legacy search platform is run a report of top search queries. Search is the classic 80/20 scenario,  where there will be a small number of popular search terms which constitute most of the queries, and generally those queries will consist of synonyms of the same query. Example: Jobs, Careers and Employment. As a start, take the top 25 most searched terms and implement a “key match” result. Showing the right result first not only increases efficiencies, it drives user acceptance of the new platform
4. People Search. Gone are the days when name, email and phone number are good enough. Employees are using search to find subject matter experts, others who have worked on the same project or client, etc. Create a profile template, which is relevant to your organization’s needs and make completion mandatory. Some areas to consider:
   • Contact details, including picture
   • Areas of expertise
   • Documents created by the individual
   • “Ask me about….”
   • Client and/or projects
   • Personal interests
   • Org chart
5. When the search implementation is complete, invite feedback in the form of a simple survey. There is only one question that needs to be asked: “Did you find what you are looking for?” If not, please describe what you were looking for. For all the missing content, it will be down to the project owners to determine if it is a relevancy or an indexing issue and adjust accordingly.

Due to the end of life of the Google Search Appliance, 2018 will be a big year for enterprise search platform migrations. The question remains as to what companies will do – either drive increased efficiencies and collaboration via an enhanced search experience, or will it be a missed opportunity of “rip and replace” and conversations of what might have been?

Peficient has a team of advisors dedicated to enterprise search. If you need help with nexgen options, please send me an email (amy.shavor@perficient.com) for an in-depth discussion.

After much back and forth, it seems like the end-of-life for the Google Search Appliance (GSA) will be the end of 2018. Most GSA users have adopted a “plug, play and walk-away” approach for far too long. The GSA will not continue functioning as an unsupported appliance. It will turn off like a light switch exactly 30 days after license expiration.

Here are 7 tips for current GSA users preparing for this mandatory move:

1. Check when your current GSA license expires. Are you in a position to go-live with a new platform approximately 60 days before the license expiration date?  If not, Google will allow current customers an incremental monthly license upgrade to take your GSA to the end of December 2018. For example, if your current GSA license expires in June 2018, you will have access to a 6-month renewal term. These extensions are only available for purchase through the end of 2017, so you must act quickly.
2. It sounds obvious, but make ensure your organization has proper budget for search platform replacement. In most cases the GSA was extremely inexpensive. Those who have requested a like-for-like replacement budget, may be in for a shock.
3. Determine if your organization would prefer an on-prem, cloud, or hybrid solution. I also suggest making a list of the content sources to be indexed and indicating if they are cloud or on-prem repositories and databases. If the content is heavily weighted to on-prem, it’s important to let potential vendors know early in the discussion. Some cloud search tools perform best when indexing cloud content.
4. IT and business users need to work together to revalidate current business requirements. Most GSA users have relied on Google’s embedded learning algorithms to keep content fresh and assumed the GSA was serving up the best results. Because of this hands-off approach, many companies are faced with outdated search strategies, business uses cases, and old-fashioned user interfaces.  Search has significantly evolved in the 5 years. A list view of content pushed to end-users is no longer good enough. With a modern search solution, people expect contextually relevant information to be presented through an intuitive UI. Conduct workshops with key stakeholders to review search strategy, content sources, security models, search results UI and ongoing support.
5. Most of the leading search platforms on the market will require more care and feeding than the GSA. Do you have the bandwidth and skill set to support search internally? If not, will you hire for those skills or outsource support to an implementation partner?
6. Work with a technology partner to create a realistic implementation timeline. I suggest targeting the completion of migration and testing of the new search platform prior to Oct 31, 2018. This approach will provide adequate time to address any unforeseen problems you may encounter. Don’t get caught in the sea of companies doing last minute Q4 migrations. Good search implementation partners will be very busy, and ad-hoc or last-minute projects will be hard to accommodate.
7. Look beyond a like-for-like replacement, there have been a lot of innovations in search over the past few years. Functionality like predictive analytics, natural language processing, and machine learning are now part of most leading search platforms. Understand what these tools can do and how they can benefit your business.

photo by chad johnson on flickr

1. Follow the Content

Almost all of our enterprise search clients are indexing at least one cloud-based content repository, such as Box, Salesforce, Google Drive, Office 365, etc.  This historically involved writing connectors that download all of the information back to an on-premise search engine. As more content sources move to the cloud, it is becoming increasingly inefficient (and absurd?) to download all of the content back to the ground so it can be indexed.
With cloud-based search engines, the idea of cloud-to-cloud indexing is introduced.  Typically, some form of connector or adapter is still required (see my recent post for a suggestion to make this easier), but as long as the connectors are also deployed in the cloud, it is an architectural improvement.  Some vendors are even considering internal peering arrangements that reduces the cost of intra-cloud data movement, reducing the cost to index first-party content in the cloud, since the bits are all flying around within the same cloud.

2. We Need More Power!

Search applications increasingly demand advanced features like text analytics, language translation, optical character recognition (OCR), document previews, and machine learning ranking algorithms, not to mention increased indexing and serving capacity for an ever-increasing amount of content and number of users.  On-premise search engines often struggle to keep up with the demand for these features, particularly on larger repositories.  Physical limitations of CPU and RAM and storage are a cat and mouse game with traditional on-premise search engines.  The competition between indexing-time resources and serving-time resources is always a delicate balance.
Cloud-based search engines have fewer limits when it comes to computational power and resources.  Yes, there are still ultimately limits, but they can be mitigated more easily in the cloud, and typically at a lower financial cost.  OCR and language translation can be spun off to queues and processed by farms of worker nodes.  Document previews can be stored in vast cloud storage buckets.  Machine learning models can consume enormous amounts of RAM without drawing attention.

3. Hide the Complexity

Deploying a load-balanced, fault-tolerant, performant search engine on-premise typically requires deploying multiple, replicated copies of the search index and all associated components.  The Google Search Appliance, for example, was a fast machine, but it still required multiple nodes (at increased cost) to handle extreme indexing or serving loads.  Autonomy IDOL and Microsoft FAST architectures for large environments often looked like the ironwork of the Eiffel Tower with all the interconnected layers and nodes.
Properly designed cloud-based search engines can abstract that complexity for the customer.  Search vendors can architect the indexing and serving layers to scale dynamically to meet variable demand.  Products like SolrCloud, Elasticsearch and SearchBlox make it easy to spread load across multiple nodes, but they still require the customer to physically manage their own instances and capacity.  True cloud-based search engines, like Amazon CloudSearch, Azure Search, Coveo Cloud, and Swiftype, are taking this concept to the next level, offering search-as-a-service that eliminates the customers need to worry about physical infrastructure or scale.
The advantages of moving search engines to the cloud are real.  The challenges are real, too.  Next week I plan to address some of the criticisms of cloud-based search engines and the possible mitigations.

Not long ago, our team published a guide on Google Search for Life Sciences because the Google Search Appliance (GSA) can work wonders for companies in our industry. But we just learned that Google has decided to put that powerful yellow box, designed to sit on-premises, to bed.

Let me say that again: Google will no longer offer the on-premises version of GSA. The good news? You’ll still be able to leverage Google Search for Work in the cloud. 

You won’t find much information online about Google’s decision to stop selling the legacy GSA, which debuted in 2002, but since we’re one of the company’s strategic partners, we were one of the first to know and wanted to pass the news along to you.

Earlier this month, Perficient’s enterprise search expert, Chad Johnson, wrote a blog post indicating that Google has decided to “focus their engineering efforts on cloud-based solutions.” While the current version of GSA will no longer be offered, it will continue to be supported for the next three years.

With this news, organizations who already have GSA or who are in the market for an enterprise search solution, will have to make some critical decisions. For GSA customers, do they migrate to the cloud? And, if you’re not currently leveraging GSA, but are looking to implement a solution, do you go for Google’s new cloud solution or a product from a different vendor? In a post written on February 11, 2016, Chad highlighted some options on how to move ahead.

It has been exactly one week since Google announced that it would be sunsetting the Google Search Appliance over the next three years. And what a week it has been. I have had the opportunity to speak with media representatives at Fortune and CIODive, I have spoken with several current and prospective customers of the Google Search Appliance, I have spoken with numerous other search companies, and I have chatted informally with our consulting team and friends in the enterprise search ecosystem.
I would like to share some of my initial thoughts to the news, and the rollercoaster of reactions that I, and others, have had.

Did the news surprise me?

The most common question I have been asked is if the news surprised me. Was I surprised that Google would focus more energy on a cloud-based service than a physical yellow box? Not at all. It makes good sense for Google to develop a technology that does not require shipping GSAs around the world and installing them in data centers. I have been a partner with Google for 7 years and I have come to expect periodic hard-left turns from them. They usually turn out to change an industry in retrospect.

Is the Cloud a good place for enterprise search?

Cloud-based enterprise search is a divisive idea. We have had some customers that were already begging for a search solution in the cloud. They were appalled that they still had to rack-mount a GSA in a data center. In some cases, the GSA was the only physical hardware they still managed on-premise. However, we have other customers that would not consider a cloud-based search engine under any circumstances. I am sure you can image the variety of clients we deal with. Each company has their own level of tolerance for off-premise services, particularly with their most sensitive documents and data. I believe that this is a topic where corporate opinions are changing rapidly, so I am not overly concerned with customers that do not want to migrate to cloud search at this time. I suspect that each year, more and more companies will become comfortable with this idea.

So what do I do now?

It all depends on how you define “now”. Google has not made any announcements about any future product. I have absolutely no inside knowledge, so what follows is purely my own opinion. A cloud-based enterprise search product from Google could end up being radically different from a virtualized version of the GSA. We should not make any assumptions until we know more. I have had some customers asking me how much the GSA replacement will cost, or what the network or latency considerations might be, or if they can import their GSA configuration files into the new Cloud-based version. It is premature to assume that these types of questions are even applicable. At this time (February 11th, 2016), we have no information about what form Google’s new product might take. We don’t know what features it will or will not have. We don’t know how similar or different it will be from the GSA. And we don’t have a timeline for when it will be available.
Therefore, “what do I do now” could be different depending on the timeline and horizon of your enterprise search needs. First, we have three full years to wind down the GSA. If you have already deployed a solution on the GSA, and it is stable and you do not need to make any radical changes or enhancements to it this year, I would suggest taking a wait-and-see attribute for at least 6 months. Wait to see what Google announces and what form the new product might take. If it sounds appealing, start to plan a migration strategy given the roadmap Google reveals to us. If it does not sound appealing or will not work for your company, you will still have plenty of time to make other plans.
On the other hand, if you have immediate enterprise search needs in 2016, waiting for Google’s new product seems unrealistic. I see two logical choices: A) go ahead and implement the improvements on the GSA now and deal with the migration to another tool at some point in the future over the next three years, or B) start researching other search options in the marketplace now and implement the new solution on a new tool. I am currently evaluating the other search engines available in the marketplace to help our customers identify the most comparable tools for their particular needs. There is no one-size-fits-all replacement for the GSA. My analysis will help customers evaluate other search options based on a comparison of features, but also on aspects like ease of use and performance.  Additionally, I do not expect Google to make any more major changes to the GSA, so the appeal of other products could become greater as time goes on.  Customers will need to consider all of these factors when deciding what to do over the coming months and years.
To be clear, I am not advocating a mass exodus from Google Search (present or future). It is a reality, though, that some customers are left in limbo by this announcement, and each customer will need to decide their own tolerance for wait-and-see vs. find a replacement now. Perficient is prepared to assist people on both sides of this fence. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at GooglePractice@perficient.com.

Google is a visionary and a cloud-first organization. In an announcement today, Google has decided to sunset the hardware-based Google Search Appliance (GSA) and focus their engineering efforts on cloud-based solutions. The GSA will remain supported for the next three years, giving you plenty of time to evaluate the future of your enterprise search investment and continue to deliver value to your business.
Perficient is uniquely qualified to help you chart a course through this change. We have over 60 collective years of enterprise search experience, over 250 enterprise search engagements, and a wide variety of technology partnerships. Perficient is your trusted partner. With this change, comes opportunity — it’s a great time to look at technologies that can enhance your search solution like analytics, big data, and natural language processing.
Perficient’s team of experienced Enterprise Search and Knowledge Discovery consultants can assist with:

• Support Services – Perficient will continue to support the GSA for current clients during the life of the product and help you get the most value out of your current investment.
• Product Selections – Perficient can help identify search technologies that meet or exceed the capabilities of your current solution.
• Migration Roadmaps – Perficient can develop a transition plan to your new search technology, including implementation timelines, information about new features and capabilities, and estimated costs.
• Optimization Assessments – Perficient can review your enterprise search implementation and recommend new solutions to increase value to your business. Discover the latest advances in Enterprise Search and Knowledge Discovery — the combination of search, big data and analytics.

To learn more, subscribe to our Digital Tech blog using the form below. We will deliver a weekly digest of information that can keep you posted on this transition and the evolution of enterprise search and knowledge discovery. 
Together we will make this transition as seamless as possible! 

Chris Cook joined our Google practice as a Solution Architect in 2013, arriving with over 25 years of IT experience, including technology deployments, network and security systems, and enterprise search solutions.  Chris has architected and deployed some of our largest and most complex Google Search Appliance implementations, including an aggressive project that indexed a multi-million document SharePoint repository and launched to over 100,000 employees in less than 6 weeks, start to finish.  Chris spoke with me recently about his experience as GSA Technical Architect at Perficient.

How long have you been working with the Google Search Appliance? Do you remember your first project? What was it?

I started working with the GSA about 7 ½ years ago in March of 2008. Version 5.0 was hot off the presses.                                                                                  

How can I ever forget my first project! Fresh out of GSA training, I was sent to install and setup a single GSA at an investment management firm in Boston. I was excited. After all, I was armed with all my training materials and a head full of fresh memories of the multi-day class. What could possibly go wrong???

Upon arrival at the client, I was escorted into a large conference room where I was able to unpack my laptop and get setup for the day. After a few minutes, the door opened and in walked about a dozen people (many were company execs) who all sat down and prepared for a meeting where, unbeknownst to me, I was the guest of honor. The questions came fast and furious, but only a few of them were softballs. Most were the kinds of questions that could only be answered by someone who had done this a few times before. By the end of the meeting it was clear to everyone in the room that I was a bit “green” when it came to the yellow search box.

Gathering my notes from the meeting (feeling somewhat overwhelmed) I remembered that although I was new at this, I still had the benefit of GSA training plus there was a team of support resources at my disposal that can provide guidance in performing a successful deployment.

It became clear to me that enterprise search is like an ocean and the GSA is like a ship. It will keep you afloat easily enough, but you really need to know how to navigate the waters in order to find the destination without getting lost at sea.

Can you tell us about your current project? What kind of application are you building, and what technologies are involved?

My current project is with a well-known Insurance company. We developed proxy applications to interface with the GSA for search queries, serve suggestions and authorize users from the cloud. Now search developers can easily integrate search into their site or application. They only need to learn a small sub-set of the GSA search protocol. The GSA admin can control the default behavior for each search client application to provide the desired search experience. 

We installed connectors that Perficient build for IBM Connections and Salesforce. In addition, we developed a custom search connector for OrchestraCMS based on our own very popular Salesforce connector.

In this deployment, the GSA is not directly exposed to users, the search applications are deployed in the Salesforce cloud and call back to the GSA at the client’s data center through a series of load balancers and proxy servers. The GSA is simply used as a web service and returns JSON in response to search queries.

What skills or experience, other than the GSA, have you found useful when implementing Enterprise Search projects?

Almost everything! Implementing a GSA from start to finish involves several interactions with many types of people at every level in the business. Starting as an SE, I use my skills and experience from past implementations and GSA training to field technical questions about the GSA. I use my verbal skills to speak clearly and succinctly so I can be understood by all in the audience. I must tune my answers to the level of understanding of the person asking the question. For example, a content owner in the business may not want to know the technical details of how the connector works at a low level, but the network and security admins will want them all. I use writing skills to communicate through emails and produce deployment plans, documentation and user guides. I use my skills and experience with various software programs for creating documents, spreadsheets and architecture diagrams. I use my experience as a systems and network administrator to architect complex deployment diagrams involving failover, disaster recovery planning, firewalls, load balancers, etc.

Do you have advice you would give to someone about to implement an Enterprise Search project with the GSA?

Don’t panic! There are very few situations in which you can’t recover. If you have a problem, chances are someone else has seen it too and can offer some advice on how to resolve. Remember there are plenty of resources online and Google support is always there if you get stuck.

Also, plan your installation carefully. Create a diagram of the entire search architecture and identify all the communications between systems, port numbers, etc. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just boxes and lines to visualize and easily see if anything is missing. Know what resources you will need ahead of time and plan accordingly. Often there is a lead time to procure network resources such as IP addresses and firewall changes, virtual machines, extra memory, CPU or disk. Know how many, how much and how often for everything in your deployment because you will be asked.

Thanks, Chris!  It’s a pleasure to have you on our team!  -Chad