Microsoft launched a business version of its Windows Desktop Search application.
Microsoft Corp. recently released a business version of software that aims to help people more quickly find documents, e-mail and other data stored on Windows-based computers.
Similar to the present version designed for consumers, Microsoft’s new tool will allow businesses to decide just what gets indexed and searched on their corporate networks, as well as make it easier for IT managers to deploy the tool.
The free new desktop search product comes after years of complaints over how hard it can be to locate Microsoft Word documents, sort through long e-mail lists and find other data people use during the workday.
The software will feel similar to Microsoft’s consumer offering for searching files on desktop computers. But the product is designed so corporate technology executives can easily install it on many computers simultaneously, and better control how it is used.
When it released the Windows Desktop Search program, Microsoft promised to release an enterprise version. Rival Google launched an enterprise version of its Google Desktop program earlier this month.
The enterprise tool is designed to make it easy for corporate I.T. departments to deploy, customize and manage the application on systems running Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
These new enterprise-class enhancements to the desktop search capabilities we introduced last spring will empower IT professionals to deliver higher productivity, lower IT management costs and greater ease of use throughout their organizations, MSN Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said in a statement.
Microsoft sees the business-focused desktop search product as an intermediary step before the company releases its next version of Windows, called Vista, which promises better search capability.
Microsoft released a beta version of its desktop search tool last December. The final version was released in May. Microsoft said the product will be available in 15 languages.
Desktop search has emerged as a key battleground for all of the Internet search players, including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.
While largely comparable to the current version, Microsoft’s business-oriented desktop search program will enable users to also search their corporate Intranet. Windows Desktop Search, though, will not index or crawl through corporate data. Instead, it will provide a gateway to a company’s existing portal tools, whether that’s Microsoft’s SharePoint Server or a third-party product.
However, the new version of Windows, due out next year, is not going to include an even more advanced way to store and organize information, called WinFS. That will now come later.
Microsoft also said that its consumer desktop search product will eventually let people search information found in Microsoft’s new Windows Live online offerings. In the future, Microsoft plans to integrate desktop search with its forthcoming suite of live products, the software vendor said in a statement.
Windows Live, another Microsoft effort to compete with Google and Yahoo, seeks to expand the Windows franchise online with better Web-based e-mail and other products. The search capability for those services, many of which are also still in development, is due out next year.
A consumer version of the application has been available since last May.
Microsoft hopes to add much of this new functionality to the consumer search tool as well.
We will be looking to enhance the consumer versions of our product later this year with similar features, product planner Heather Friedland said.