Search is the universal gateway to information, according to Charlie Hull, Managing Director and co-founder of search technology specialists, Flax. "If your enterprise search doesn't work, and work well, then your colleagues simply won't be able to work as effectively", he explains.
The organisational benefits of effective search to an organisation can be simply expressed, according to Hull: "If you can't find it, you don't know it, and if you don't know it you can't act on it." And without effective search, organisations risk repeating work and missing key insights.
Charlie Hull will be giving the Keynote 'Fishing the Big Data Streams – The Future of Search' at Enterprise Search Europe in London this October. "I'll be talking about how Big Data is about to get a lot bigger - and how search technology might be a way to make sense of it all", he explains. "I'll show some cutting-edge work on integrating search and high-volume streaming data and talk about how to build truly real-time search with open source software."
The conference emphasis is on case studies and shared experience of real-life enterprise search problems and solutions, as Conference Chair Martin White explains: "We always learn a great deal from listening to stories and having the opportunity to talk to the storyteller. This year Enterprise Search Europe is full of search storytellers, each with an interesting search story to tell. They come from many different countries and types of organisation; some are using open source search solutions and others are using commercial solutions while several of the stories will be about the challenges of migrating from one solution to another."
Using enterprise search to underpin and enable improvements in business performance features in several case studies presented at the conference. Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca will share how they are developing innovative solutions for enterprise-wide search, extending an expertise search solution to cover a much wider set of repositories and services. Dayle Collins, Senior Manager of UK Knowledge & Network Services at PwC, will focus on how the organisation has developed search enhancements that can have a significant impact on business performance, including content scope and quality, analytics and user interface design.
Organisations in the public sector are accountable to a wide range of compliance requirements and enterprise search can play an important role. NHS Wales will share the story of how they are using Apache Solr to index health records, providing single-click access to highly sensitive patient data, while Nottinghamshire County Council will discuss how – and why – they are enhancing search and compliance, using a concept-based application to improve relevance and precision
For some organisations with existing enterprise search applications, the challenge is to continuously enhance the offering – perhaps even migrating to a new platform. Danish consulting group COWI will be sharing the story of their migration from Autonomy to SharePoint 2013, with perspectives on making the business case and managing the migration project itself.
Academic libraries, too, with their diverse collections of documents and information, have search challenges to overcome and stories to share. Anita Wilcox of University College Cork’s Boole Library will discuss how, four years ago, the university had to make a decision between implementing an e-discovery application or adopting a federated search approach. Her presentation tells the story of that development from business case to the way it now meets user requirements.
Enterprise Search Europe 2015 takes place at Olympia Conference Centre, London on 20-21 October 2015. The conference features more than 20 global experts presenting over 20 conference sessions, including 10 Case Studies, 3 Roundtables, networking and social events, and a Sponsor Showcase.
Early bird and 40% multi delegate discounts available – view the full programme and register online at www.enterprisesearcheurope.com