Agile Software and the Google Search Appliance

"I live on it..."

"The Google Search Appliance is so simple to use..."

"The Google Search Appliance is a must have for Support..."

"Don't tell Google that we cannot live without the Appliance anymore..."

"The Google Search Appliance has completely changed the way that I do my job."

..... Agile Software employees

Business Agile Software Corporation delivers product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions that global corporations use to connect employees, departments, and partners in order to facilitate collaboration on product design, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution. Their software systems help companies drive profits, accelerate innovation, improve quality, enable globalization and ensure regulatory compliance throughout the product lifecycle. Over 11,000 customers in the automotive, aerospace and defense, consumer packaged goods, electronics and high tech, industrial products, and life sciences industries have licensed Agile solutions.

Challenge To serve its thousands of customers effectively, Agile has a global workforce of over 700 employees, located across the globe including locations in India, Canada, China, Germany, Texas and headquarters in San Jose.

Within the various business functions, information is managed and stored differently. For example, the finance, legal and Solution Delivery teams store information in Documentum's eRoom, a document repository, while the engineering team manages all of its information in Agile's own PLM system, ClearQuest and wikis. Customer Support uses Onyx, a web-based CRM system, and Primus to manage knowledge base articles. In total, Agile has over 300,000 documents throughout its various Enterprise Application stores, including wikis, eRooms, blogs, websites, word, and PDF documents. The systems holding this information were being used independently, with no ability to run a unified search across them. The company's inability to efficiently leverage company knowledge prevented Agile from mitigating the costs and resources associated with training its workers.

Finally, as a public company, Agile was particularly at risk to Sarbanes Oxley restrictions. While the company wanted to provide its workforce with unified search and retrieval, it could not risk compromising the security of sensitive company information. To achieve this precarious balance, Agile needed a solution that could be integrated with its current document systems, which were already structured to manage security and user access.

Solution Agile's executive team approached IT with a request for a "Knowledge Management" tool that was easy to implement, accessible across its global workforce, and compatible with security requirements. A team comprised of IT executives and business owners selected the Google Search Appliance based on the Appliance's "solution-in-box" concept and the end-user familiarity it offered. Within a few weeks, a small IT team began a phased roll out of the Google Search Appliance. With minimal customization, they integrated the Appliance with the various content sources used across the organization. Agile did more extensive customization to index content in Enterprise Applications that could not be crawled due to their architecture. Agile used the Web Services interfaces of the Enterprise Applications to extract and feed content to the GSA. As a result, Agile was able to achieve unified search without overhauling the systems within which the different departments functioned.

With the Google Search Appliance, Agile's global workforce can now:

  • Access information in various systems across the organization
  • Leverage the work of other business functions within the company
  • Easily access information contained within various information sources, including CRM systems, wikis, document repositories and blogs.

More importantly, Agile can offer these capabilities while still adhering to security measures that balance the delicate relationship between strict Sarbanes Oxley regulations and wide-spread access to information.

Results "The Google Search Appliance works well, works fast, and more than lives up to expectations. . Top to bottom, it's very well thought-out," according to Tom Loebach, Solution Consultant for Agile. Within a few months the Appliance was enthusiastically supported by all business functions. During a month-long period at full implementation, the number of searches performed on the Appliance doubled. Familiarity with Google significantly helped adoption, as no end-user training was required to train employees.

Agile's entire workforce has benefited from the quick information retrieval offered by the Appliance. Both employees and off-shore workers are able to do their jobs much more effectively. In addition, the availability of information to the off-shore workforce has greatly reduced the cost and resources involved with training.

The Google Search Appliance's return on investment has been greatest within the customer support team. Whereas before the support team often had to ‘recreate the wheel' with each new issue, with the Appliance the customer support team has immediate and easy access to the engineering department's information. With one search, a Customer Support Rep can access search results originating from different systems. Customer support team members can quickly and easily access work histories by entering customer numbers. For frequent problems and questions they have implemented OneBox triggers that direct team members to indexed content for assistance with troubleshooting. The speed with which the Appliance is able to access critical customer and product information has positively impacted both client and employee satisfaction.

About the Google Search Appliance The Google Search Appliance is an integrated corporate search solution that extends Google's award-winning search technology to intranets and websites. The Google Search Appliance is available in three models: the GB-1001 for departments and mid-sized companies; the GB-5005 for dedicated, high-priority search services such as customer-facing websites and company-wide intranet applications; and the GB-8008 for centralized deployments supporting global business units. For more information, visit http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/.