February 1st, 2007
Demo 07: Reveal debuts P2P enterprise search application
Reveal Technology unveiled a peer-to-peer search application targeting distributed workgroups for finding and sharing documents, including unstructured data. Unlike Google or Microsoft enterprise search solutions, Reveal, a 3-megabyte download, is permission-based to a file and user level, so that only authorized users get access to data, said Laurent Meynier, founder and CEO of the company. All shared documents are cached, either across peer servers (which isn't ideal if a machine is turned off), hosted at Amazon S3 or another service, or on an on-premise file server, and management tools are included for IT administrators.
Reveal is also integrated with Microsoft Office–when you save a document you can make it accessible to members of the workgroup. Users can belong to multiple, overlapping workgroups and can share the information relevant to each workgroup member.
In addition, Reveal applies a "usage rank" based on 13 metrics, said Meynier, to increase relevance. "We look at how the data is related to creators and consumers and how documents are related. If you mail a PDF file to five people, that document is going to be more important. The goal is to return the documents most related."
User can create tags and share them with others, so the network can be organized in the way most appropriate for the workgroup, Meynier said. Reveal is also going to expose a API so that unstructured data like email, with permissions on top of it, could be integrated into search for services such as salesforce.com. In addition, LDAP, Active Directory and Exchange servers will be integrated into Reveal after the initial release of the product, Meynier said. That will allow the business rules and policies to be automatically applied to the content.
Reveal is in testing with HP, SAP, Cisco and Stanford and Harvard universities, among workgroups ranging from 10 to 80 people. It will go into official beta next month, Meynier said.
More Demo 07 coverage here. See also Webware.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
