We all know that when you want to find information on the web, you Google it. Be it product information, information on competitors, business reports, research, whatever…you feed some key words to Google and it spits out a bunch of relevant links. Easy.

But what about when we want to find information within our own organisation? When we want information from within our own four walls? You want some info on a product you sell, you chase a guy in the sales team. Looking for a financial report? You call Bob from accounts. Services brochure in PDF format - call marketing. And so it goes on. God forbid, you might even right click on your main shared network drive and choose “search” then wait for 3 hours and still get no useful information…

What if you could have a familiar web based search facility to find information in your enterprise, just like you’ve been doing for years on the web? How much easier would it be to throw is some keywords and get a result virtually instantly? Rather than calling marketing, you just search for “company profile brochure” and up comes a bunch of results, ranked by relevance and with metadata to give you as preview of what the resource is.

This is all possible with Microsoft’s free release of Search Server 2008. The free express edition may be all many companies will ever need, whereas other companies that fully adopt enterprise search and wish to integrate it with other applications will want the full blown enterprise version.

Download the release candidate of Search Server 2008 Express edition and give it a go - it’s straight-forward to configure!