The first time people learn about the Google Search Appliance, they often remark, ‘I didn’t know Google makes hardware.’ Actually, to power the millions of searches and other products, Google builds and deploys LOTS of servers in datacenters all over the world.
With the Google Search Appliance, one of the most difficult engineering challenges was to take Google's excellent web search and make it work well in the Enterprise. Specifically, the Google Search Appliance integrates with a wide variety of security systems, content repositories and other enterprise applications. Doing this in a relatively small footprint to make it easier for customers to deploy is nothing short of amazing. The reason we chose the appliance route is that was the only way we could give our customers a true plug-and-play experience. Customers routinely tell us that they setup the Google Search Appliance or Google Mini in a matter of hours – which stands in stark contrast to more complex enterprise search systems.
Thousands and thousands of happy customers later, the market has spoken – enterprise search is an important business challenge and customers worldwide are increasing their investment in search.
Recently, we started working with Dell to manufacture the Google Search Appliance. This partnership enables us to focus more on the software side – which is our real value add. Additionally, Dell’s international reach is helping us make the Google Search Appliance available faster in markets around the globe.
So does this mean the popular (and playful) yellow appliance is going to be replaced by a more buttoned-down corporate server? As you can see in the ad below that Dell is running to showcase our partnership, the familiar yellow box was one of many customizations to the manufacturing process that insures that the Google Search Appliance will continue to be the brightest box in the data center!
"This is typically a business with 30-60 day projects and the ability to show things to customers as they’re being developed, which is not the kind of engagement the traditional SIs are used to."
"Berridge said that the focus is very much on best practice business processes and getting close to users in agile development-style engagements where they can see the applications taking shape and see the effect of changes as they happen."
