Yahoo! and IBM OmniFind to offer free enterprise search software.

Given our propensity to produce more and more documents and files, there has grown up a market for desktop search tools, software that lets you spider and search your own hard drive in the same way the search engines index the Net.

Given Window’s extremely search facilities, this has been a must (things will get better under Vista, though).

Still, many of these search tools will not search local networks with several servers, which means that they are not that useful for companies. Instead the search giants would like firms to pay for their enterprise search products, software packages that can be used for local indexing. Some of these may also serve as search engines for intranets and corporate web sites.

Among these products we find Google Enterprise Search, which is actually physical computer — and a colorful one at that! Norwegian Fast, which used to run the AlltheWeb search engine is now focusing its main efforts on corporate search.

Yahoo! and IBM OmniFind have now decided to give away free enterprise search software. IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition can be used for searching intranets, local file servers as well as corporate web sites.

The software can support up till 500,000 documents per server, and more than 200 file types and documents in more than 30 languages.

Do IBM and Yahoo! give this away from the goodness of their hearts? It is Christmas, after all? Probably not. There is always the upgraded versions, supporting more than 500,000 documents and you have to pay for support.

The default search interface is very similar to the search form found at the Yahoo! Search web page, which means that Yahoo! may also succeed in making Yahoo! Web Search the default search engine of your staff. There is nothing wrong in this, you get it for free, after all. Moreover, if you want to you may remove the links to Yahoo!, and redesign the interface using your company logo and color scheme.

You may also add synonyms to the search engine algorithm.

The software can run on 32-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 4, Update 3, 32-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, 32-bit Windows XP SP2 and 32-bit Windows 2003 Server SP1. However, you can actually also run use it of a regular PC, as a more limited desktop search tool. Internet Explorer and Firefox is supported.

See also: IBM OmniFind Yahoo vs. Google Enterprise (ZDNet)
IBM’s Omni Yahoo Edition (Battelle)