BUSINESS

Special Issue: Innovation

Interview: Google, Cognos, and the search for meaning

January 24, 2007

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Kevin Smith Last April, Cognos, an IBM company, announced its support of Google OneBox for Enterprise, a feature of the Google Search Appliance. Through joint development efforts with Google, Cognos extended the capabilities by allowing reports, analyses, dashboards, key metrics, and alerts to be directly accessed through the new Google OneBox for Enterprise.

Here, Cognos Manager of Communications, John Blackmore, speaks with Kevin Smith, Partner Program Manager, Enterprise at Google about how OneBox is enabling a far-greater range of users in an organization and leading to better overall performance management.

The appeal of a simple user interface

JB: Google has become the industry standard for Web searches. What do you think it is about the Google experience that makes people want it for their enterprise search needs as well?

KS: "I think it's a combination of the simplicity and familiarity of the interface and the power that's behind it. With Google, users can go to a very simple Web page, enter in what they're looking for, and very quickly get back exactly what they're looking for."

JB: Google, along with partners like Cisco and Cognos announced OneBox enterprise search functionality in April of this year. Can you give us a snapshot of what OneBox is and why users care about it?

KS: "OneBox for Enterprise is a feature of the Google Search Appliance. It takes the concept from Google.com and applies it to the enterprise to allow business users to access the information that they need. OneBox is the ability to reach out and grab real-time, secure business information along with traditional search results.

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As an example, a user could go into their interface, type in their query, and see if a particular pattern matches. If the system recognizes that they're looking for a certain type of information it will actually go out and look at an external system, such as Cognos 8 Business Intelligence or another enterprise application, grab that information, pull it back, and display it to them in real-time.

OneBox functionality has been around on Google.com for quite some time for functions such as checking the status of packages and flights, getting stock quotes, and more. What's interesting here and really important for the enterprise is that users can now get valuable business information while they're doing their jobs."

Drawing from internal and external systems

JB: Does it get information from both inside the company or does it pull information for external sources as well?

KS: "Google.com will get you information directly from the Web. OneBox will get you information either within the Google search capability or from an external system. That system can be another system that's installed at your company, such as an enterprise application like Cognos 8 BI. It can also go out and hit an external system if it is designed to do that. If you wanted to you could go outside the enterprise to, for example, a hosted application and pull information back in."

How BI fits the Google vision

JB: How do you see this new functionality, the merge of BI and search fitting into the Google vision?

KS: "The Google vision is one of unified search where a user can go to a single location and get all the information they're looking for. Before the introduction of OneBox users were restricted to only receiving indexed information that resides statically in the system.

With OneBox, you can go out and grab dynamic information in a familiar format or from the application that is most effective for the task at hand. This could include reports, dashboards, and other strategic information that has already been generated in Cognos 8 BI."

Cognos a "natural fit" to partner with Google

JB: Why did you choose Cognos as one of the premier partners when you announced OneBox for Enterprise in April?

KS: "There's a couple of reasons. It's very important for us to demonstrate how OneBox could apply across a number of different areas within the enterprise. We wanted to get a good set of initial partners that focus on different areas of functionality. Business intelligence is obviously very import for the enterprise.

We wanted to make sure that was covered. We've been working with Cognos for quite some time and on different integration points so it seemed like a natural fit."

Customers now developing their own modules

JB: We announced OneBox in April, so it has been about 6 months now. What has been the industry and customer response to it?

KS: "Response has been very positive in terms of customers, partners, press, and developers. Customers are developing OneBox modules for their own internal use. We have a host of partners who are already adding their own set of OneBox modules up on our Google site.

In addition, there's been very positive reaction from the press and analyst community to the list of partners that we launched with. We continue to hear compliments for the fact that Google works closely with some of the leaders in the industry, such as Cognos, to make better enterprise search a reality for users."

ROI for joint customers

JB: For Cognos, I can understand how Google search functionality works with our basic value proposition helping people make the best fact-based decisions. How do you see OneBox in Google's enterprise search contributing to return on investment for joint customers?

KS: "I think the value for great enterprise search is getting people the information that they need and then letting them go off and do their job. Search is a fundamental part of this. Business intelligence is a fundamental part for people being able to process the information they find. The combination of great search and great business intelligence can only be a huge benefit to users."

Driving higher user adoption

JB: A constant challenge in every organization is the need to promote higher and broader user adoption of the technologies the company invests in. How is OneBox helping encourage this adoption?

KS: "Technologies get adopted when they help users. I think the ability to easily find information and then have useful analysis done on that information will be very popular with users and definitely help promote strong user adoption and satisfaction with investments in Google OneBox and Cognos 8 BI."