Drawn up in cooperation with Matt Zornes of Silgan Plastics, this document contains a useful list of search syntax additions that Ontolica Search brings to MOSS 2007, SharePoint 2010, and Search Server Express.  This is designed to be a quick reference guide for end users to learn search syntax such as the use of wildcard*, OR, and NEAR operators.  The Ontolica Search Tips document can be downloaded here.

Held on January 22, 2010, participants in this webcast were the first to see Ontolica 2010.  In this webcast we demonstrate the new features Ontolica brings to MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010 including full document preview, search as you type, auto suggestions based on community context, search refiners with result counts, and “did you mean” with multilingual spell checking.  To view the archived version of this webcast, please click here.  

SurfRay announces a major release of its industry leading SharePoint search solution Ontolica. New search productivity enhancements include full document preview, "search as you type", numbered refiners and search suggestions based on community context.

SurfRay Copenhagen, DK and Santa Clara, USA - December 19, 2009. The search solution developer SurfRay, with offices in the USA, UK, The Netherlands and Denmark, announces a new version of Ontolica.

"This milestone release will bring even more search productivity to customers' SharePoint 2007 implementations and secure their investments in Ontolica when they choose to migrate to SharePoint 2010" says SurfRay CEO Søren Pallesen.

Ontolica 2010 extends the search functionality of SharePoint 2007 and upgrades without any extra license costs to SharePoint 2010 when it is released by Microsoft later next year. New functionality in Ontolica 2010 and Ontolica Preview includes:

Actionable thumbnail preview. Provides thumbnails in search results with mouse over for a configurable larger size and click for full page preview.

Full document graphical preview. Provides a preview pane in multiple screen layouts, with mouse over for larger size and click for full page preview.

Refiner counts. Appends numbers on each of the Ontolica refiners (drill downs) to let users understand how large a search result can be obtained by clicking on a refiner.

Auto suggestions. Suggests query completions in real time while typing search key words. Suggestions will be divided on community context of the end users as well as personal query history.

"Did you mean" suggestions. Interprets the user's intent to find the best answers to search queries and will suggest corrections to misspellings.

"Search as You Type". Real time display of top search results when search terms are keyed in. Total number of results is shown in a preview list. Documents can be opened directly from preview result list.

Ontolica 2010 is free as an upgrade for Ontolica customers with an active maintenance agreement. Ontolica Preview is an optional extra module with pricing TBA. Both Ontolica 2010 and Ontolica Preview are available February 25, 2010.

In September 2009, SurfRay launched a new website to better serve clients and the general public interested in the business, IT administration, and development aspects of the search industry.  This new SurfRay website offers a wide range of knowledge including product related documents, videos and technical advice, as well as a wide range of non-product related resources such as general technical blogs about SharePoint and website search, business articles related to the search industry, and a wealth of additional community resources.  We will post some of highlighted articles on our blog at SharePointSearch.com, but encourage you to find the full up-to-date content at www.surfray.com.

This October, come visit SurfRay at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, NV.  This will be a great opportunity to network with executives from the search industry leaders.  You will be able to demo the latest enhanced search offerings for SharePoint with Ontolica 4.0.  Find out how you can save your company countless wasted hours by improving your findability solution.  Even if you have used Ontolica in the past, make sure the check out the new Search Intelligence Module exclusive to Ontolica, as well as the new functionality for Search Server Express.  We can be found in the exhibit hall at booth 827, just across from the MindSharp booth on the rear exhibit wall.  If you would like to schedule some time for a personal demo or meeting, please feel free to let us know in advance by contacting us at sales@surfray.com.  We look forward to seeing you there!   

COPENHAGEN and SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 21 /PRNewswire/ - Search engine company SurfRay, which develops and markets the leading search solutions Ontolica and MondoSearch, has a new management team in place.

New Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Soren Pallesen will head up the sales, marketing and development of a number of recognized Danish search engine tools such as MondoSearch and Ontolica.  These solutions are especially developed for use by companies, authorities and organizations that have difficulty finding, structuring and gaining an overview of information contained in content-heavy websites, intranet sites and other IT systems.

“Our market potential is extremely under-exploited, to the extent that I don’t think a situation like this has arisen in Europe previously.  As a software company the challenge for us is to ensure that the products we develop are a precise match for customers’ needs,” says SurfRay CEO Soren Pallesen

SurfRay, which was founded in 1998 and previously acquired Mondosoft, currently has over 2,400 contracts with over 1,000 companies in more than 30 countries, SurfRay has offices in Copenhagen, DK and Santa Clara, CA USA and employs about 20 employees.  The technical personnel under Soren Pallesen’s management come from the former SurfRay Company and are currently in the process of appointing three additional developers in Copenhagen.

Soren Pallesen joined the board in March when SurfRay 2009 A/S purchased the former company’s assets.  Soren is 43 years old and has worked for a number of high-tech startups, as well as having a number of years of international experience including time at the analysis company Gartner and as a director of the software companies Baan and E.piphany.

After successfully completing the restructuring of SurfRay, major shareholder Skaelskoer Bank asked Soren Pallesen to take on the management of the company as its new CEO.  Soren Pallesen has also been able to attract two new board members to the company, both of whom have international careers and extensive experience of developing start-ups.  The two new board members are Ken Tomassen, Managing Director for Novell in Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Middle East, and Soren Steen Rasmussen, who has followed an international career at Microsoft and is currently a Vaekstfonden partner and a board member in a number of Danish growth companies.  Flemming Philipsen joined SurfRay in March 2009 as chairmen of the board.

“The potential for growth at SurfRay is massive both by growing our large existing customer base, and continuing to sell our leading search solutions to more new customers,” says Soren Steen Rasmussen, who, like Ken Tomassen, joined the board on 12 July 2009.

New royalty-free photos of Soren Pallesen are available here:

http://klintfoto.dk/SurfRay.htm

The CVs and contact info of the new Managing Director and board members are available below:

CEO Soren Pallesen has worked with a number of start ups.  He joins SurfRay from a position as Venture Partner at Vaekstfonden, where he was responsible for new business areas and for strategic planning and management for a number of the fund’s portfolio companies.  Soren Pallesen began his career as European Market Analyst for international analysis company Gartner Group, where he worked for seven years.  Subsequently, he has worked as a Director of 1CT, as International Product Marketing Manager for E.piphany and Product Marketing Director at Baan.

Board Member Soren Steen Rasmussen has extensive experience from a large number of board-level positions in IT companies.  He is a former Vice President in Macromedia, responsible for Microsoft’s Enterprise and Partner sales in Asia and the Nordic Region and Sales Director for Microsoft.  Soren is currently a Partner at Vaekstfonden, one of Scandinavia’s largest technology focused venture companies, with responsibility for analysis and business development of the fund’s IT and Telecommunications investment portfolio.

Board Member Ken Tomassen is Managing Director of Novell in Denmark, Finland, Norway and The Middle East.  Prior to his career at Novell, which began in 2004, he worked for IBM Software Group for 10 years where he was responsible for software sales in Denmark and key accounts in the Nordic Region.  He was also stationed in Paris with responsibility for software sales to SMBs in EMEA.

Chairman of the Board Flemming Philipsen is the Managing director and owner of Kapa Consults Aps and an internationally certified business consultant.  Since 1983 he has worked as an independent business consultant specializing in crisis management, reconstructions, generational handovers and capital injections.     

With the release of the most recent Ontolica patch, SurfRay is proud to announce that Ontolica Search can now be used with Microsoft Search Server 2008 (MSS) and Search Server Express 2008.  This provides an amazing opportunity for Search Server users to enjoy functionality such as wildcard*, faceted search, and easily configurable web parts without code.  For more information on enhancing your search interface with Ontolica and Search Server please contact us at sales@surfray.com.

Do you have any programs other than those made by your operating systems designer on your computer?  You can’t even buy a new computer from the store and say yes to that statement.  This is because an OS is platform for all other tools to attach to.  It is your Christmas tree, and each program you install is another ornament placed on the branches.  Without the back bone, without the tree, your decorations would be disorganized and scattered about the floor.  Furthermore, each computer, each tree is different.  I tend to go the route of the little Charlie Brown tree with fun ornaments of no common origin.  Most likely your tree looks far different than mine because you value different things.  The programs you find useful on your computer are not necessarily the ones your children or siblings find useful. 

This same principle is the case with SharePoint.  SharePoint acts as the backbone to your intranet, on which everything is organized.  Each additional web part that you add is another ornament on the tree.  Each company is different, so it would be impossible (and far too expensive) for Microsoft to imagine and include every bit of functionality needed by every business around the world.  Here enters Microsoft Partners.  Microsoft Partners offer a wide variety of SharePoint add-ons that cater to the vast needs of global businesses.  These add-ons such as enhanced document viewing with VizIT sp, advanced document importing by Knowledge Lake, or advanced search by SurfRay can be chosen a la carte to fulfill your business needs.  If there is something specific that you are hearing your colleagues ask for from the MOSS installation but do not know of a solution OOTB, third party solutions such as these may be your saving grace.

“ENTERPRISE SEARCH”.  For anyone in an IT related field this terms is all too familiar.  Everywhere I look I find myself running into the term, although this may just be secondary to my profession.  So why is the term been the hot topic of the last few years?  Has the entire world’s economic basis somehow consolidated into a few large entities?  With all this focus on the enterprise, what about the little guy?

Much of the fascination with this term has been generated by the media.  Enterprises are sexy, and with Microsoft’s acquisition of FAST and the website giants they support, enterprise search solutions attract the glamour of a seemingly dull industry to outsiders.  In addition, companies that target enterprises buy media attention like ants at a picnic, and I can’t disagree with the appeal of closing a multimillion dollar design deal with an enterprise client.

It is first important to understand that not all “Enterprises” should be considered such for this argument.  Many companies with thousands of users or site visitors simply do not have the budget or IT department enormity to be considered “Enterprise”.  Companies willing to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a search investment should be considered “Enterprise”, while those in the tens of thousands range should not.

For the few of you reading that work in the enterprise level, how much did your firm pay for their companywide search solution?  If they haven’t implemented one, are there plans to do so, and what are the needs of your users?  Have you hammered down a budget to fulfill them?  Have you included the number of development hours you are willing to spare in your budget? 

For most of us, we don’t need the infinite customization included in an enterprise search solution.  In fact in many cases the development time that comes bundled can become a larger burden than the licensing itself.  Just because your company has the ability to spend your lifetime wages on a solution does not mean they need to.  It is important to evaluate your various options and decide if those few additional features are worth a few additional layoffs, or if the less expensive option without the “Enterprise” tag will meet the needs of your organization.

Most of us work in medium sized companies with moderate budgets.  For companies in this group you are already long forgotten by the “enterprise” level providers.  So what are your options when analyzing how to improve your company’s search solution?  You are also given the options of buy, build or freeware.  As you have learned by this point in your analysis, most buy solutions are out of your budget, yet your team is already stretched too thin to build.  So do you settle for freeware the seldom works as expected?  What happens when after weeks of testing you realize that wildcard solution doesn’t work for people search?  How much money and man hours did that testing cost you?  Are you happy with those barely configurable web parts that make you wish the job was outsourced? 

For those of you with smaller budgets and equally overworked IT departments there are solutions available for you.  Ontolica Search for MOSS and Ontolica Wildcard for MOSS from SurfRay were designed with the medium sized company in mind.  The solution is quick to deploy and can be easily customized through a GUI which walks the admin through changes step by step.  What takes an hour of coding in OOTB MOSS takes a minute in Ontolica.  By utilizing the MOSS index and requiring no additional hardware, the price is kept far less than Enterprise targeted search solutions.  How much could your company save by implementing Ontolica as your search solution? 

SurfRay will be at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in July.  If you are a Microsoft Partner attending the WPC we would love to see you there.  Make sure to link in with us on the WPC Connect portal!   

Search engines cannot read minds (the plans on the white-board in Building 43 aside, of course).  So, if we’re to type in “restaurant by the bank” I would get results about restaurants, financial banks, rivers and executive bonuses.  I would need to add search terms, and perhaps play that delightful search-engine guessing game we all know and love.

Improved ranking or relevance is one answer to this challenge, while it is no magic-bullet it certainly helps to have your search engine profiled to return results that match the kinds of things that users generally look for.  Up-weighting certain documents formats, or pages with strong peer-ranking which include certain keywords is one way to work around this.

The problem is “generally”.

Profiles match a general group, and if they are applied too strongly, they make it harder to find anything that falls outside of that profile.  Setting up multiple profiles that users can swop between is another approach, but requires still more mind-reading.  A cheaper approach is to make the results easier to navigate by revealing as many of the facets actually present in the result set and then letting the user drill down through the results based on what is actually in the results.

Going back to my search for something eat near the bank, it would be much easier for me to see an overview of what sorts of results I got back immediately, rather than be confused about why I am seeing a whole slew of results about executive compensation (and expensive restaurant bills).  While I might get results like that at the top of the list, I’d see the various facets in the results (banks, financial crisis, restaurants, railway-stations and rivers) and be able to zero in on what I am looking for.

Now, this obviously presupposes that the documents in your index actually have this data attached to them, but users are suddenly given a much wider overview of what sorts of results have been returned without having to click through page after page of results.  Since this meta-data is returned based on results, it is not dependent on a “one-size-fits-all” profile.  Though, of course, this is dependent on how the documents are tagged and categorized.

But, at least it’s not mind reading.

How much does your findability solution really cost?  It is obvious that in today’s economy it is more important than ever to make every dollar count.  Then why are so many companies sitting back, ignoring one of the largest wastes of man-hours in many companies?  On average, employees spend 9.5 work hours a week just searching for pre-existing information.  What’s worse is that 6 hours a week are spent recreating documents that exist, but cannot be found.  When thinking about the average hourly cost of your employees and colleagues, how much do you think this search time is costing your company, or even your department?  With this information combined with the statistic that users are typically successful with their searches only about 40% of the time, the cost of a poor search solution can quickly compound to quite a large burden on a company of any size.

With the abundance of solutions available, why is it then that so many companies don’t look to enhance their ECM or search solution until there is disposable revenue?  71% of companies are unhappy with their search functionality, but as everyone is downsizing and trying to maximize the performance of each employee, we overlook one of the largest drains on efficiency.  Has the world become numbed by Lord Google, the evil dictator that forces you to alter queries 10 times before finding the right site?  Is it that executives don’t know there is a solution, or that SharePoint administrators aren’t being proactive in finding a third party fix with fear of pitching something with a price tag?  

Depending on the solution, the price tag should not be the hindrance.  Applying the statistics cited above, an employee paid £75,000 a year on a 40 hour work week and 50 weeks a year (2000 hours).  Based on this, the employee earns £37.50/hour before benefits.  The cost per week to find information is £337.50/week (£16,875 annual) and the cost to recreate information is £225.00/week (£11,250 annual).  This being said, the cost per employee at this rate would be £28,125/year for a poor findability and search solution.

In a different scenario, let’s use 500 employees earning $20 per hour, with just one hour loss user/ month.  In just three months that is $30,000 in wasted wages. That is an extra employee in many companies.  In addition, that is more than the cost of Ontolica for two production servers, one development server, and a year of support.  In this scenario an Ontolica search solution pays for itself in just 3 months of use. 

So how much does your findability solution really cost?  Are your colleagues spending hours a week looking for documents?  Does your company have a plan to implement a better search solution?  If not, maybe it is time to do some research and be the proactive team member that saves your company tens of thousands.

The included statistics are from:

The Hidden Cost of Information Work, IDC

A search field is more than a convenient tool for web visitors.  It is a fundamental component of the customer experience because it is a window into customers’ needs and desires.  Furthermore, it is the only truly interactive element on most websites.  MondoSearch has been refined for almost a decade to accommodate all search needs.  It is an advanced, multi-lingual enterprise search engine.  With unmatched performance and ease-of-use, MondoSearch is the most comprehensive and cost effective solution on the market today.

MondoSearch also delivers categorized search results in context, so users will know what is relevant to them.  With MondoSearch you are covered  both in terms of a site search engine that provides the best possible overview for site visitors (and potential customers), as well as a collaborative knowledge source that provides the comprehensive information of what your site visitors needed online.  MondoSearch provides a great service to your visitors, and it gets smarter by learning from users’ behavior to provide input for your business, on an operational as well as a strategic level.

MondoSearch is available for both local installation and as a hosted solution.  SurfRay takes care of setting up, maintaining, upgrading and hosting the search functionality.  Please visit our website for a full list of features or to request a free 30 day trial.