The explosive growth of Intranets brings with it myriad challenges, technical and otherwise, for IS departments. Chief among these is what IDM calls the information discovery problem. The huge amount of content now available on the Internet and corporate webs can make finding precisely the information you require -- not to mention ensuring what you find is timely -- a trying, inefficient task. (See IDM's Special Issue on the topic (Feb 27, 1997) for details.)

Among the solutions being advanced to put users in touch with relevant, up-to-date information are search engines, catalog servers, and push technology. Each of these has its merits, and now IntelliServ 1.0, a newly-minted application for Windows NT from California-based Verity Inc., brings to bear best-of-breed technologies on the information discovery problem.

IntelliServ, which Verity bills as "an advanced knowledge management application for the enterprise," works as a central data gathering and disseminating application. Built exclusively for Microsoft IIS 3.0 running on Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 3), IntelliServ uses Active Server Pages (ASP) to deliver a totally Web-based application.

In addition, IntelliServ is optimized to work with Verity's Search '97 platform. Data can be gathered from any number of diverse data sources:

• Web servers
• POP3 mail servers
• file servers
• existing Verity data collections.

Retrieved information can be delivered to users as Web pages, via a scrolling ticker, by e-mail, or -- road warriors take note -- through a pager, via a fully customizable interface.

Discovery with a difference

There are a number of factors that separate IntelliServ from other "knowledge management" products on the market. First, IntelliServ is uniquely configurable. Each user on an Intranet can create his or her own profile, specifying preferences for both data gathering and dissemination. IntelliServ works by letting users search pre-configured data sources using their own criteria.

The IntelliServ engine also allows users to participate in threaded discussion groups accessible through their personalized interfaces. These discussion groups allow groups to collaborate on a variety of topics related to the information being retrieved.

Second, IntelliServ is capable of searching data sources collected from multiple servers. As Intranets scale up to require more than one web servers, this feature moves from the "nice-to-have" to "must-have" category. IntelliServ is in the vanguard of products offering this capability. While not alone in this regard -- Hummingbird's Common Ground document sharing solution, the subject of an upcoming IDM review, sports a Java-based search engine that can span servers -- most other search products index only a single server.

Third, IntelliServ can be configured to distribute scanning across multiple servers, concatenating the results on a designated "main" server. This feature is especially useful for large Intranets or users/workgroups requiring access to large amounts of data.

Finally, IntelliServ comes with several tools useful in monitoring IntelliServ's performance:

• IntelliServ Manager - used to specify which actions taken by IntelliServ are written to a log file. These actions include documents, errors, notifications, queries, and scans.
• Performance Monitor Counters - IntelliServ can also be monitored using Windows NT's Performance Monitor. IntelliServ contains a number of counters which can be used by Performance Monitor to watch system usage and the load placed on the server by IntelliServ.
• Event Viewer - another Windows NT service that can be used to view/audit any errors generated by IntelliServ during its normal operation.

Removing the shrink wrap

Installation of IntelliServ is quick and easy. The product comes on CD and installs in a matter of minutes. During the configuration process, you will be prompted for three important pieces of information that may be necessary for IntelliServ to function properly in your particular environment: E-mail Server/Domain, proxy host and port, and a non administrator user name/password for accessing networked drives.

NOTE: Before installing IntelliServ, make sure that Active Server Pages has been installed on your system. Many users of IIS 3.0 don't have this feature installed, and IntelliServ won't install without it.

Once IntelliServ has been setup, the next step is to configure the application using the administrators tools. IntelliServ can be administered from any Web browser with access to the application. IntelliServ's administration interface is completely Web based. There is no console application to be run from the server. Configuring the application consists of four steps: Creating user accounts, creating user groups, attaching data sources, and creating queries.

Administrators who already make use of NT's user database will be glad to know that IntelliServ is capable of effortlessly importing the file. IntelliServ can also import comma delimited text files. If neither of these options is appealing, users can granted the right to create their own accounts.

Groups are where IntelliServ security privileges are assigned. By default, users are either members of the IntelliServ users group or the IntelliServ administrators group. Additional groups can be created for users with similar information requirements such as those in the same department or members of a project team. Access to data sources can be granted or denied to users based on the groups that they are member of.

Data sources are the driving forces behind IntelliServ. As mentioned above, a data source can be any Web site, e-mail server, networked drive, or Verity collection that the IntelliServ application can access. Any number of data sources can be defined. The only limit is the amount of disk space on which to store the indexes. In addition to defining data sources, administrators can also configure specific properties for each individual data source. IntelliServ can be configured to scan Web sites up to a certain depth - useful for keeping the focus of a scan within a relatively controllable environment. Scans can also be scheduled, allowing administrators to define the frequency with which data sources are scanned. Scans can be performed at specific times or intervals of time such as Tuesday at 9pm or every 12 hours. Scheduling can be applied to each data source individually, providing for a way to ensure that data is always current.

Queries are what allow users to specify what information they wish to receive and where that information is to come from. Queries can be made up of key words, phrases, or Boolean-like expressions using IntelliServ's Verity Query Language (VQL). Queries can be used to search for data in any number of data sources. Users may define their own queries, or choose from queries created by IntelliServ administrators or other users (provided they have permission to access those queries). Users can customize their profiles to display the results of queries that they specify. These queries can be displayed on a personal Web page, as a scrolling Java ticker, sent in an e-mail, or sent to a pager's e-mail address. Queries can be configured to present information filtered by its age. This allows users to ensure that the information that they are receiving is timely.

The piper

All of this performance and flexibility comes, not surprisingly, at a cost. In addition to the $4995 price tag (for a single server and 5 users), IntelliServ is extremely resource intensive. Putting the product through its paces, I found out just how quickly my server's CPU could hit 100% utilization.

I tested IntelliServ on a single processor P133 with 219 MB ram and a 4 GB hard drive. Using IntelliServ to scan an Intranet server with approximately 2000 HTML files, the server's CPU quickly shot up to between 85% and 100% utilization. In addition, after I rebooted the machine because of an unrelated software upgrade, I noticed the system was responding rather sluggishly. A quick check of NT's Task Manager revealed that a process belonging to IntelliServ was consuming about 25 megs of my machine's memory as well as 85% of the CPU. After killing the process and rebooting the machine, the same resource consuming process returned. A third reboot failed to yield different results. Upon opening the IntelliServ administrator's tools, I noticed that IntelliServ was in the process of running a scan on all attached data sources. This scan was not scheduled, but seemed to be the result of rebooting the system. To confirm, I stopped all scanning and rebooted the system - again, the same results.

While these performance issues may not in and of themselves be a problem, they deserve attention, especially if you intend to run IntelliServ on the same machine as your Web server or other application servers. If performance does becomea problem, Verity's documentation suggests running IntelliServ over multiple servers. A less elegant but perhaps more typical solution would be to run IntelliServ on its own server, dedicating resources and keeping the rest of your network problem-free.

Overall

IntelliServ is an excellent product that offers users a variety of powerful information retrieval features for a resonably low cost per seat. Because of its close integration with Verity's Search '97 technology, IntelliServ is a natural choice for users of Verity's popular search engine, as well as sites running NT-based middleware such as Allaire's Cold Fusion. Others looking for an out-of-the-box knowledge management system will find Verity IntelliServ a state-of-the-art-solution, hungry for hardware but very easy to set up and use.

About the Author

>Rob Bilson is a freelance writer and the Senior Webmaster at Amkor Electronics, the global leader in semiconductor IC packaging, assembly and test. In addition, he can of ten be found doing consulting work for the Hard Drive Cafe, a Delaware based Internet/Intranet consulting firm.