Disclaimer
OK, first off, lets get this straight…I am an employee of Hyland Software, Inc. This blog post is my own, done outside of work hours, and is my own opinion. I am allowed, as a nerd, to have an opinion on the battle over Federated Search vs. the Walled Garden or gardens that we all live in daily. I may say things here that are counter to opinions at Hyland, but that’s because they are my own opinions.
Having said all of that…is Federated Search the Key? Uh…duh.
WTF is Federated Search?
Are you familiar with the Versojobs guys? If not, take a second to watch a short or two…this is modern…office comedy…and its great. Once you have their voices in your head, read this…
“In the AI era, the ‘Walled Garden’ model (where one provider owns the data, the search, and the LLM) creates a superior user experience for common tasks but creates a critical ‘Intelligence Gap’ for complex enterprises. While ecosystems like Google or Microsoft provide ‘easy federation’ within their own apps, they cannot solve the cross-vendor, high-security, and legacy data requirements of a global organization. Therefore, Federated Search is not only NOT a failing strategy; it is the only viable path for ‘Switzerland’ platforms to provide unified intelligence without forcing risky and expensive data migrations.”
Federated Search is fancy talk for “search all my stuff”. Remember when search worked? Yeah me too. It doesn’t anymore. Why? A number of recent studies/polls (SUPPORT MATERIAL NEEDED HERE OR THIS ALL GOES) show that many companies outsource 70% or more of their software. SaaS is here to stay, but when it comes to SaaS…what about your data? Its everywhere.
How do you search for everything you need to do your job? You need to check your email accounts (maybe more than one), network shares, Sarah’s Google drive that nobody is supposed to know about…but EVERYONE knows about…and uses…etc.) You can’t find things, its too difficult.
What are you on about?
Recently, I was trying to get the transcript of a video that I saw on Twitter. I have been using Claude for most of my research lately, because it seems to be best in processing PDF’s and data, so I defaulted to Claude, gave it a link to the video on Twitter, and asked for a transcript. I figured this would be an easy, straightforward task, and lets be honest…technologically…its slam dunk…but…
Claude quickly came back and said Twitter blocks that sort of operation. Hmm. These companies are blocking other agents, so I tried Grok. Grok gave me what I needed pretty quickly…it had access to the Twitter servers. I then asked Gemini to look at a copy of the same video on Youtube, and it did well as well. Hmm. I then asked Gemini to transcribe the video ignoring all previous conversation, ignoring any and all video on youtube, using just the Twitter link…it couldn’t.
The silo walls are thickening.
It seems that if a company own the AI model and the ecosystem, they have advantage. Claude has gone the code route. They have their niche. Gemini controls the Googlesphere, helluva niche, Copilot in the MS ecosystem is a threat due to the sheer size of their user base. Apple? Apple uses Google right?
Is federation capable of mastering this? or is owning the ecosystem more important?
My initial thought to be absolutely transparent was…OMG…we’re $#^&@!’ed.
But then I realized, even as a consultant for a content management company, I use SO MUCH SaaS. I could do most of my job with a chromebook these days. Its all up there in the cloud but more succinctly in the cloudS.
My life is spent in multiple ecosystems, with different rules, different security, different interfaces, different models, different taxonomies, lions, and tigers, and bears…take me home, Toto.
You need Federation. Your data are in multiple systems, and your data will always be in multiple systems. Your data will never not be in multiple systems. That should not stop you from being able to treat your data like a holistic, canonical source of information, from one unified content platform.
Federation matters now more than ever. I am for some reason in a silly political argument with a friend, and that argument has led me down a new AI rabbit hole.
Get ready to read my thoughts on Federated Search.
