Searching Small Business Data with the Google Mini

When you want to activate Google search capability across your entire organization, Google has a one-stop solution for you. The Google Mini is an integrated hardware and software solution that plugs into your corporate network and lets any network user search all the content you have available.

As you can see in Figure 38.1, the Google Mini is based on a plug-and-play hardware unit that connects via Ethernet to your corporate network. Installation and setup should take less than an hour; just plug it in, point it at the content on your network, and you're ready to go.

Figure 38.1. The Google Mini.

Employees access the Google Miniand your corporate informationvia either a customized search box on your website, the Google Toolbar for Enterprise, or Google Desktop for Enterprise. It can search across multiple file servers, and recognizes more than 220 different file formats, including all the popular corporate file formats.DOC, .XLS, .PPT, .PDF, and the like.

The nice thing about using the Google Mini is that it lets employees search your corporate information using the familiar Google search interface. If they're used to using Google on the Web (which they probably are), they'll have no problem finding corporate information on a Mini-enabled network.

You can also use the Mini to power search across your company's public website; it can serve search results with different interfaces for different departments or websites.

Tip

As a general rule of thumb, the Google Mini is best for small businesses, while the Google Search Appliance is designed for medium and large businesses.

The Google Mini comes in multiple versions. The most affordable version costs $1,995 and searches up to 50,000 documents. Additional versions search 100,000, 200,000, or 300,000 documents for $2,995, $5,995, and $8,995, respectively. You can learn moreand purchase the Mini onlineat www.google.com/enterprise/mini/.