Continuing our series on Coveo technology innovations, let’s next explore options for delivering secure, unified information access when that information resides both on-premise and in the cloud.

Most organizations these days utilize some mix of cloud and on-premise technologies. Even companies that handle highly sensitive and private information or work in highly regulated industries have begun to embrace the cloud in various ways. More often than not, a “hybrid” IT infrastructure is now the norm.

To empower knowledge workers with the ability to find and explore the information they need to do their jobs efficiently, an effective enterprise search solution will securely crawl all of these systems – wherever they reside – and build a single, unified index of the organization’s content. Within this unified index, the solution will not only associate (and honor) all of the native permissions for each source system, but it will also identify themes and connections within the content itself, and enrich the index with intelligent metadata to help makes things (and people) more findable. This enriched index then serves as the “intelligent data layer” for all of the various role-specific search interfaces and search-based applications the organization deploys for knowledge workers.

But while it is essential that the solution unifies content from across all types of cloud-based and on-premise IT systems into a single index, where that actual index itself resides is also an important factor. The ideal location depends on the unique circumstances and requirements of the specific organization.

For some companies, deploying the search solution on an internal architecture within the firewall is optimal. This is often the case in highly regulated industries, or where highly sensitive, private information is considered. Alternatively, some organizations might want to avoid the costs (and SLAs) associated with on-premise infrastructure, and will opt for a hosted search solution. And among the very largest of enterprises – typically those with globally distributed teams – a mix of search architectures is adopted, with various components of the solution deployed and replicated across multiple on-premise and cloud instances within the company’s broader architecture.

The point here is that there is no correct answer when it comes to the residence and architecture of your search solution. A sophisticated enterprise search solution will provide the architectural flexibility to meet any of these approaches, and can be deployed entirely on-premise, entirely in the cloud, or in any variety of hybrid architectures.

Coveo is such a solution. The Coveo Cloud Platform runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS), and is built upon the same foundation as Coveo’s on-premise Search & Relevance Platform. It is highly elastic, enterprise-scalable, and has been designed to meet the requirements of organizations with even the most sophisticated architectures and IR requirements.

Where does your search solution reside, and what are your company’s plans for adopting cloud resources in the future? We’d be happy to discuss options with you, and help architect a solution that aligns with your strategic goals and priorities. Get in contact with us today to set up a planning session.