This article is the second in a series intended to help those exploring federated search to understand the steps to procuring a federated search product or service Part I explored the business case, i.e. the compelling reasons for pursuing federated search. While the exploration of the issues in Part I may have included discussion of benefits, the discussion was a high-level one. Part II drops to a deeper level of detail. Part III will consider features in the context of requirements and benefits.

Note that benefits are not features. While I am not a sales or marketing professional, my experience in working with customers is that they desire benefits and that they only desire the features that increase their benefits. Too many features can actually make an application undesirable if, for example, ease of use is an important benefit and the weight of all those features negates that benefit.

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This roadmap series raises and addresses a number of issues that prospective customers of federated search solutions will encounter. It is based on the outline I published last week; I’ve made a couple of changes to the outline to reflect reader input. Here is the new outline:

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For many readers of this blog, I suspect that the roadmap to a federated search solution is not clear. How do you get from “We need federated search” to a deployment that meets your organizations needs and that you can feel proud of? Below I present an outline of a process I believe can help you to organize your thinking, your planning, and your actions towards the goal.

Note that the outline below is just that, an outline. The value to you will come during the next several weeks as I discuss, in individual blog articles, each item in the roadmap.

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