Gaviri extends search to portable memory, handheld devices |
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By Barbara Darrow, Senior News Editor
24 Feb 2008 | SearchITChannel.com |
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Given the search battle royale raging between Google and Microsoft, one might think there are no other solutions. And one would be wrong.
Gaviri Technologies Inc., a small Parsippany, N.J., company, has cross-platform desktop search capability that actually reaches beyond the desktop to USB or other connected devices, or any network-connected device that the computer detects. It also searches handheld devices and phones, on which many people store contact information and mail.
For road warriors armed with memory sticks -- and the solution providers supporting them -- that is an attractive proposition.
While Gaviri's PocketSearch has been available for a couple of years, company founder and CEO Emeka Akaezuwa is weighing new distribution options, including channel-delivered search appliances and bundles with other hardware devices.
"Resellers could put [Gaviri] on a server and sell it into small, medium or big businesses," Akaezuwa told SearchITChannel.com. "The concept of our engine is different; I call it adaptive search. It will know it's on the desktop and if a network is attached it finds it," he said.
A desktop download is 3 MB compressed and a full install requires 15 MB of disk space, although that can be customized.
Gaviri used Trolltech's Qt cross-platform framework to build the search and indexing technology.
"The indexing, the searching is all cross-platform and [supports] Unicode. The one thing that varies [with the operating system] is how it talks to the file system. On Windows it's one thing, on Linux another. So 85% of our code is cross-platform and 15% adjusts itself depending on the user's device," he said.
David Dadian, CEO of Powersolution.com, a Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., solution provider, was bowled over by Gaviri search.
"It indexes anything, any device, cell phone, USB drives, digital cameras. And it's written to be totally cross-platform," Dadian said. And, it indexes images.
Dadian said he expects to put the technology into production at his company soon. "It blows Google away" was his summation.
The whole enterprise search appliance market is not new. Google has been pitching its own appliance as a way to push its Web-centric search know-how inside corporate firewalls. It was also one of the company's first forays into the world of the channel, because in this venue it needs partner help connecting to legacy systems.
But Google does not yet search tiny devices, and Google was also slow to make its Google Desktop truly cross-platform. Microsoft is also trying to position itself as the leader in inside-the-firewall search with Live Search.
Gaviri offers free downloadable versions of PocketSearch for Linux, Mac or Windows computers and associated devices. PocketSearch Professional sells for $39.95 or $49.95 for a network version.
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