A recent Outsell report about the future of federated search

Outsell Inc. is a research and advisory firm. They cover a number of information industry segments, including search, aggregation and syndication. In August they produced a report related to federated search:

Information Management Best Practices: The Future of Federated Search. August 16, 2007. The abstract begins:

Federated search goes beyond searching the open web a la Google to include subscription-based content in a variety of databases. This report examines what federated search is and how it has evolved, and makes recommendations for information managers who want to offer their users more valuable search tools.

I have not read the report so I have no opinion about it. There is, however, a post on August 20 titled Analysis of federated search from the Family Man Librarian blog with impressions of the report from long-time librarian Steve Oberg. While Oberg’s post is definitely worth reading he does leave us hanging with this comment:

The report’s authors argue that federated search vendors haven’t much to fear from Google, and they go on to articulate why this is the case. They see a good future for federated search.

I’m interested to know the specifics of the analysis leading to this statement so I might just need to get a copy of this report for myself.

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