Google is an offering an upgraded version of the hardware appliance its sells to companies and government organizations for Google-style Web search of office documents.SAN FRANCISCO
(Reuters) - Google Inc said on Tuesday it is an offering an upgraded
version of the hardware appliance its sells to companies and government
organizations for Google-style Web search of office documents.
The Web search leader said the latest version of the Google Search
Appliance, a pizza-sized box that holds a self-contained search system
for managing an organization's electronic files, can store up to 10
million documents in a single box.
The new product has the same capacity as a previous version that
came in a five-box rack. Google already sells a 12-box version of the
appliance in a rack the size of a stand-up refrigerator that can search
up to 30 million documents.
The appliances contain Google software to power the search services, running on storage hardware from Dell Inc.
Once installed in a network, the appliances help staff find
documents in various different corporate store houses, from EMC Corp's
Documentum, IBM's FileNet, Open Text's LiveLink and Microsoft Corp's
SharePoint.
New features in the latest model include greater encryption powers
and the ability for Google Alerts to notify users when new documents
are stored on the network by colleagues.
Network administrators will be able to manage Google Search
Appliances in 27 languages, adding Turkish, Czech, Vietnamese and
Portuguese. The boxes can, in turn, deliver search results to office
workers in 40 different languages.
Mountain View, California-based Google does not disclose revenue for
search appliances, which are part of its enterprise software and
services business aimed at corporate buyers.
Roughly 98 percent of its revenue comes from advertising sold alongside services on Google.com and affiliated sites.
But because Google does not reveal revenue for the business, it is
hard to verify its claims to be the market share leader in enterprise,
as well as consumer, search.
"We estimate, with obviously imperfect information, that we are the
market leader," Matt Glotzbach, product management director for Google
Enterprise, said in a phone interview.
Rival providers of search used inside company networks include Microsoft, IBM, and Autonomy of Britain.
(Editing by Braden Reddall)
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