Gunning to be the Google of IT search, Paglo takes its IT search engine public for all companies.Paglo, an IT search engine that netted 900 companies for its private beta last fall, opened up its platform to the public May 27, adding new crowdsourcing features to help IT staffers find solutions from those who have faced similar challenges.
The Paglo search engine helps IT personnel index their IT data so they can quickly find answers to questions about corporate computers, networks and employees.
For example, a company can discover and locate all devices connected to its network, learn how many copies of Microsoft Office its employees are using, or find users with administrative privileges.
The ability to rapidly find answers to such questions is important because more business processes are becoming digitized, which means more and more types of software -- and devices to run them -- are being added to the mix.
Sometimes sifting through data from 20 or more different stacks of software for a kernel of information is the digital equivalent of searching for a needle in a haystack, which is why Paglo believes its three-piece search platform is not only useful but necessary.
Unlike Splunk, which sells enterprise search software for IT staffers, Paglo is targeting this SAAS (software as a service) solution for small and medium-sized businesses, which it places in the rather broad range of 50 to 1,000 employees, according to Paglo CEO Brian de Haaff.
The biggest change from the private beta released is that the public version had what Paglo calls "community" features, which are the company's way of enabling crowdsourcing.
The goal, de Haaff said, is to allow IT staffers struggling to solve a problem find information from people who have encountered the same problem and solved it.
For example, users can tap the experience of their peers through shared searches, dashboards and alerts, which can be saved as a Paglo "share-it."
These are then shared within a company or with the entire Paglo community. When a share-it is used, the returned information is based on the specific data in the user's search index.
Such features are key; social utilities are becoming table stakes for successful Web-based companies.
To enable this, the company employs the Paglo Crawler, an open source discovery software that gathers IT information, which can be extended with plug-ins to capture other data sources. This is downloaded by an IT admin and installed on one computer.
The crawler goes out across the network and discovers the other computers, what's on them and who is using them. Discovered information is uploaded to the secure Paglo datacenter, where it is stored in a Paglo Search Index for each company.
Paglo users leverage the user interface in the form of a customizable Paglo Dashboard, which presents results from saved searches.
The beauty is that rather than creating on dashboard and junking it every time users execute a new search, users can create as many unique dashboard views as they desire and save them for future use. These searches may be turned into alerts, sending notifications when they are triggered.
Users interested in trying the Paglo beta may download the Paglo Crawler here and follow the prompts for setting up an account.
De Haaff said there will always be a free version of the IT search engines for users, but that the company will offer additional subscription services. What those will be and how much Paglo will charge for them depends on feedback the company receives after the public beta period is complete.
Clint Boulton here. Would you consider using Paglo to get a better handle on your resources? Would you pay for additional services or stick to the free version?
