A replacement for GSA
(Google Search Appliance)

It’s over and out with GSA (Google Search Appliance). Lots of organizations using the GSA feel the pressure, but there is no reason to panic though, as there are alternatives, and they can be much more than a basic keyword search engine.

Google announced that they will offer Springboard Search as an alternative to GSA. Springboard Search is a cloud-based search option for Google apps, but there is no indication if other sources, other than the Google Apps, will be able to be indexed in Springboard Search. For on-premise customers, this will clearly not work as an alternative.

Maybe the GSA replacement project is the perfect opportunity to get more out of it for your organization, and to think about a more strategic approach, such as knowledge management?

How can you otherwise better service your customers, faster, in order to stay competitive?

Enterprise search is still the basis for building a knowledge environment that actually adds value. The indexed sources are only a part of your knowledge eco-system, but there are expertise and knowledge of people that need to be captured as well. That type of information is scattered around in different sources and applications, but needs special care and life-cycle management. Therefore such information should be centralized where it can be managed accessed and secured properly.

Search needs to stay the basis, but classification is crucial in order enable filtering, to narrow down search results, based on the specific context of the one that searches, and respecting the security of each source! The necessity for classification is often the reason why many knowledge management and search projects fail, because it asks discipline and consistency throughout the entire organization, which implies a huge change. Therefore, auto-classification is a must-have: smart technology that adds meta-data automatically on each information object, after analysis of the content of (scanned) documents, email and their attachments, files, wiki’s, …

Furthermore should one be able to easily promote relevant information pieces when found, to a knowledge base. And this should be possible with just one click. That way you centralize the crucial knowledge of your organization, where it can be maintained in a secure way. This knowledge is more reliable, has a higher relevancy, and is vital to your organization. Other information and knowledge can be essential, generic and open and need other to no real treatment. Do you know which knowledge is vital to your organization, where to find it, and how it is managed?

It is proven that traditional knowledge bases or generic intranets, often in SharePoint environments, are not the solution. They are static, and ask for way too much discipline to get the information there, let alone that you have to manually add metadata or keywords, to be able to find it again!