Google's Girouard Has High Hopes for Enterprise Search
Girouard provided four statements that he said are guiding Google's enterprise strategy:
- The first statement is, "focus on the end user and all else will follow." He said that has been one of the company's guiding principles since the company was founded.
- The second statement is, "simplicity drives adoption." As evidence he pointed to the company's simple search bar which greets the consumer beginning a Google search. That search bar has not changed significantly since 1997, while the underlying technology has changed significantly.
- The third statement is, "enterprise search will be as impactful as [consumer] search.
- The fourth statement is, "single sign-on is the bottleneck that needs attention." Girouard noted that single sign-on is a current priority among the Google engineers working on the company's enterprise strategies.
Big statements, all. Certainly there's a lot unsaid here with regard to management and security of the enterprise information unleashed through greater searchability (see statement three). Google merely hints at that with statement four, and I'm sure enterprise IT leaders are keen to hear what exactly Google has in mind to address these concerns.
To pick up a theme I've sounded before, Google's enterprise focus will shift the market on enterprise information infrastructure, and opens up a lot of questions regarding the efforts of other solutions (like enterprise content management) that address this same space.
