You may have seen CMS vendor CrownPeak's announcement last week that it has launched a new hosted search product. Traditionally hosted search has focused on the low (Blossom) or middle (Atomz) end of the marketplace; CrownPeak is clearly making a play for higher-end use cases. Atomz meanwhile has discovered that faceted search (which we examined in a review of Endeca) can bring strong returns for e-commerce sites, and the company seems to be re-orienting its approach towards that segment. The hosted search space will be interesting to watch: as more enterprise repositories become fronted with web applications, the line between web search and enterprise search continues to blur. Remember that search puts heavy demands on infrastructure, which makes an ASP approach potentially quite appealing for buyers, but also puts a premium on the indexing experience and technical plumbing available at the service provider. Test carefully before you sign a contract...
CrownPeak Search
Atomz Commerce
Blossom Software