In part one of this series, we explained why enterprise search and discovery is a key driver of productivity and innovation in your enterprise, and the evolution of next-generation Insight Engines.

In this post, you’ll find out why a data hub is the right platform for developing or optimizing your Insight Engine, and how leading enterprises have deployed a MarkLogic Data Hub to build Insight Engines for improved business intelligence, research and development, and content monetization.

Why a Data Hub for Enterprise Search and Discovery?

Over time, many organizations have invested in different technologies, such as data warehouses and lakes, to build out the underlying data storage and management capabilities for their enterprise search systems. Others bought dedicated search software to improve the user experience, but still find it a challenge to provide data consumers with reliable and actionable information. Many are discovering that a new approach is required to integrate and curate heterogeneous data sources and structures found in silos across their organizations.

A data hub is a platform that allows data architects and engineers to accelerate integration of all existing and new data types and models, and securely share the curated data needed to improve information discovery, insights, and applications development. Well-curated and governed data is foundational for successfully advancing the development of search and discovery applications, such as Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Without a modern platform to properly curate (organize and contextualize) data, enterprise data experts will struggle to move beyond data that is ‘searchable’ to make it ‘discoverable’. Transforming data in this way is what enables enterprises to turn a ‘Search Engine’ into an ‘Insight Engine.’ What’s the difference? Underpinning an Insight Engine is a unified data platform that is:

• Flexible – Allows for immediate access to all forms of ingested data through universal indexing
• Reliable – Ensures transactional consistency of data with full ACID compliance
• Fast – Offers exceptional query performance with results delivered in sub-seconds
• Scalable – Proven ability to handle growing data variety, volume, and velocity across hybrid processing environments
• Secure – Provides granular access controls at the database level
• Smart – Enables data enrichment and contextualization through metadata and semantic data integration to get more relevant results quicker

If your search and discovery applications are not serviced by data from a platform with these capabilities, then it may be time for an upgrade. 

Better Answers to Harder Questions: Using MarkLogic to Modernize Your Search Experience

The MarkLogic Data Hub platform, powered by the most flexible and trusted NoSQL database in the market, includes a comprehensive set of capabilities to integrate, curate, and access all of your enterprise data and run operational and analytical applications at scale.

With a search engine built into its core, users spend less time and effort building and configuring indexes for standard queries, eliminating the need for a bolt-on search engine for full-text search like other databases. This is incredibly helpful for data integration because it provides users immediate access to their ingested data, saves time during the curation process, and enables users to ask more complex questions about integrated data.

MarkLogic has a unique approach to addressing the growing need to bring together data from separate sources. By using its universal index to enable query and access optimization before retrieval of remote data, it reduces the amount of data that needs to be retrieved over lower-speed connections and improves performance.”

Gartner MAGIC QUADRANT FOR CLOUD DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS, November 2020

The breadth of these capabilities provided in a single, unified data platform are what separate MarkLogic from other data integration platforms powering enterprise search applications, and include:

• Multi-model approach to handle all data types without limitations
• Unlimited real-time alerts on new data at time of ingestion
• Sophisticated indexing for immediate search
• Load and query in multiple languages
• Dictionary-based entity extraction and enrichment
• Ability to represent complex and evolving semantic relationships
• Facility to store data and metadata together for lineage and governance
• Support for multiple query types and search APIs
• Elastic scalability to efficiently handle massive enterprise-wide data volumes
• Robust governance and easy data access for safe data sharing
• Web-based query development and management tools
• Cloud-native user interface for implementing agile data integration

Using these capabilities, MarkLogic customers have developed innovative search and discovery applications to improve productivity and monetize content.

Customer Success Stories

At MarkLogic, we are fortunate to have forward-looking customers that understand the value of a data hub in delivering new solutions and advanced applications. Since ‘search’ is a core function within MarkLogic, every MarkLogic customer is a success story but here are three great examples:

• Innovation Through Experimentation: Building a Lab for Literature

To drive improved productivity and outcomes, AbbVie has developed an internal literature management and sharing tool, PubLab, which has several advantages over externally developed tools in terms of information security, content integration, and custom feature development. Leveraging the capabilities of MarkLogic, AbbVie is enhancing the system with machine learning, NLP, visualization, and analytics – and new front ends to serve departments throughout the company.

• Powering a Flagship Product with a Cloud Data Hub

IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology, with more than 419,000 members in over 160 countries. Their publications group has relied on MarkLogic for many years to power their flagship product, IEEE Xplore^®, which uses semantic technology to help members discover relevant information within their 5 million articles and 1 billion related facts.

• Delighting Automotive Service Shop Customers with Fast and Accurate Diagnoses

Mitchell 1 integrates hundreds of millions of automotive repair orders while delivering comprehensive diagnostic information in seconds. Mitchell 1 uses MarkLogic to power its SureTrack and ProDemand services, and improve the usability of parent company Snap-on’s handheld diagnostic tools, which help auto shops diagnose and fix cars faster. This has resulted in increased business, customer loyalty, and market share.

To Learn More

Don’t risk “false-starts” in developing new data-driven search and discovery applications. Selecting the right technology to power your Insights Engine is critical. Here are additional resources to help you evaluate the right approach for developing an Insights Engine using the MarkLogic Data Hub:

• Search & Query Video Content – MarkLogic TV
• The Essential Guide to Enterprise Search
• Search All Your Data With an “Ask Anything” Universal Index
• Search From First Principles: Powering Better Results
• MarkLogic University – Building Search Applications Training
• MarkLogic Server – Search Developer’s Guide

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