Enterprise Search - Coming of age ?

Here is an interesting interview of Torbjorn Kanestrom of FAST on Red Herring regarding the enterprise search search space. I personally like the analogy to the database market that he makes in the article. The example with respect to the the yellowpage companies using databases as surrogates for search technology is so true. As one of the major players in the yellowpages search market,we at i411 ( I work for them !) have encountered similarbehaviorr which has been changing over the past couple of years.
There isdefinitelyy going to be some consolidation in the search market over the next few years. One of the main things that will precipitate this consolidation will be the need for standards. Currently, every search engine has its own proprietary formats with no industry standards and no interoperability between them. The web services API effort from the major search engines is a step in that direction for web search and a similar effort will be required in the enterprise search space as well.
Interesting comment about R&D in the enterprise search regarding understanding content as well as query disambiguation. I think there will also be an acute need for new techniques in visualization as the amount of data in the enterprise grows and users are faced with information overload. One of the other major areas of research will need to be in thestructuree and format of the storage of data in the enterprise. Currently, enterprises use various methods ranging from CMS's, databases, etc to just pure file systems which makes the problem of enterprise search all the more difficult. Again standards regarding the storage of enterprise information will go a long way in helping to understand the content and its context.
As this is my first post into the exciting world of blogging, I would request the readers to provide feedback to help me improve my blogging skills.