Learn about all the advantages of migrating from Swiftype App Search to App Search on Elastic Cloud, such as reduced latency and increased scalability and flexibility.

<p>Whether you consume App Search from Elastic or from Swiftype, you’re getting a set of robust APIs and unprecedented relevance controls to deliver amazing search experiences. But what if you could have that same powerful set of search tools, only better, faster, more flexible, and still built on the powerful, scalable foundation of Elasticsearch? We’d like to invite you to migrate your Swiftype App Search deployment over to <a href="https://www.elastic.co/app-search">App Search on Elastic Cloud</a>. By doing so, you’ll get a host of benefits that will help future-proof your search experiences and let you enjoy all the new development taking place in Elastic Cloud.
</p><p>First, a little background. Swiftype joined forces with Elastic three years ago. We soon began the process of taking the standalone Swiftype App Search product and making it available on Elastic Cloud. Earlier in 2020, we announced the general availability App Search into Elastic Cloud in Elastic Cloud, making it available on all of our 40+ cloud regions across the globe, rather than just the single region of Swiftype App Search.
</p><p><img src="https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/blt0dcc1204d3090052/5ed91a7d08d08473f007ab9a/app-search-analytics-dashboard-blog.jpg" data-sys-asset-uid="blt0dcc1204d3090052" alt="Elastic App Search Analytics dashboard" style="display: block; margin: auto;"><br>
</p> <strong><h2>Why make the move?</h2></strong><p>The end of life for Swiftype App Search is April 2023, but there are plenty of compelling reasons to migrate to <a href="https://www.elastic.co/cloud/">Elastic Cloud</a> sooner rather than later. To name just a few, you can count on improved speed and performance, all new feature development, and simpler pricing.
</p><p>Please note, though, that it’s business as usual for Swiftype Site Search. The end of life impacts Swiftype App Search only.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</p> <strong><h3>Faster performance, plus data locality</h3></strong><p>One of the big differences you’ll see is with performance. Elastic Cloud is available in <a href="https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud/current/ec-regions-templates-instances.html">40+ regions</a> (and growing) on Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and AWS. So you’ll always enjoy the reduced latency and data sovereignty that accompanies keeping your data close by.
</p><p>HappyFresh, the premier grocery shopping and delivery platform in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, had this to say:
</p><p><em>“App Search on Elastic Cloud allowed us to better serve our customers with faster response times, enhance overall performance, and ensure reliability of our services… and increased our flexibility and scalability, and enabled our search function to handle the drastic increase in site traffic.” </em>
</p><p><em>
– Fajar Budiprasetyo, CTO, HappyFresh
</em></p><p><a href="https://www.elastic.co/customers/happyfresh">See how App Search on Elastic Cloud helped HappyFresh thrive during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic</a>, when they experienced a 10x increase in web traffic and a 3x increase in search traffic, while at the same time boasting a 2x decrease in search latency.
</p> <strong><h3>Easier log and analytics management</h3></strong><p>App Search on Elastic Cloud inherits <a href="https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/enterprise-search/current/log-retention.html">index lifecycle management (ILM) </a>from the Elastic Stack to automatically manage logs and analytics retention. Logs and analytics are now cycled by default with ILM. Users can also change how long logs and analytics are retained with existing Elastic Stack tools, like the Kibana ILM policy management tool.&nbsp;
</p> <strong><h3>More flexibility and scalability&nbsp;</h3></strong><p>In traditional hosted search experiences where you have multiple users on the same server, customized deployments can lead to performance degradation for everyone else. Because of this "noisy neighbor" problem, heavy defaults with little configurability are typically put in place.<br>
</p><p>With App Search on Elastic Cloud, you can configure default limits — on analytics history, API logs, and number of fields and synonyms, to name a few — to meet your needs. And, more importantly, your performance isn’t impacted by other users.
</p> <strong><h3>Future features</h3></strong><p>The pace of innovation at Elastic is rapid. With numerous new releases each year, the Elastic Cloud feature set is always growing and ever improving. A tighter connection to the fast-growing Elastic Stack unlocks a lot of potential improvements in App Search’s future: We have a lot of new developments and performance improvements planned for App Search on Elastic Cloud. (These new features will of course come to the self-managed version of App Search as well.) So by migrating, you’ll ensure that your search experiences will always include all the latest updates.&nbsp;
</p> <strong><h3>Simple, transparent pricing for easy scaling&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3></strong><p>A hallmark of Elastic Cloud is our <a href="https://www.elastic.co/pricing/philosophy">transparent, resource-based pricing</a> across all of our solutions. We don’t employ limiting pricing based on per-query, per-user, per-index combinations. Instead, you can flexibly scale up (or down) whenever the need arises. You’ll also know that you’ll be paying only for the resources (RAM, disk space) you use, without feeling boxed in by restrictive pricing models you’ll see elsewhere.
</p> <strong><h3>New horizons, with full access to the entire Elastic Stack</h3></strong><p>Migrating to Elastic Cloud opens a lot of new doors. All of the <a href="https://www.elastic.co/">Elastic solutions</a> — Enterprise Search (which is made up of our App Search and Workplace Search products), Observability, and Security — are all built on the same stack. So if you want to explore other use cases, such as logging, metrics, or security, they’re all accessible to you in Elastic Cloud.
</p> <strong><h2>More information and next steps</h2></strong><p>To help you learn more, we’ve also put together a <a href="https://www.elastic.co/webinars/migrating-from-swiftype-app-search-to-elastic-cloud?token=6eto8dybr">webinar that highlights all the benefits of migrating to App Search on Elastic Cloud</a>, including a walkthrough of the process.
</p><p>You can also reference our documentation for <a href="https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/enterprise-search/current/migrating-from-app-search-on-swiftype-com.html">step-by-step migration instructions</a>, or start up a conversation in our <a href="https://discuss.elastic.co/c/enterprise-search/app-search/72">App Search forum</a>.
</p><p>If you’d like to try out App Search on Elastic Cloud, you can always start up a <a href="http://cloud.elastic.co/registration">free trial</a>.&nbsp;
</p><p>To recap, here are the future plans for Swiftype App Search (note that Swiftype Site Search will continue unaffected):
</p><ul>
	<li>Signups on swiftype.com will be shut off soon</li>
	<li>Planned end-of-life scheduled for early 2023</li>
</ul>

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Migrating from Swiftype App Search to Elastic Cloud

Elastic Enterprise Search now includes App Search on Elastic Cloud, scalability with meta engines, and SAML/SSO support for Workplace Search.

<p>We’re excited to announce the latest updates to the Elastic Enterprise Search solution: today marks the release of Elastic App Search 7.6 and Elastic Workplace Search 7.6. In this update we'll share some highlights of these releases, as well as details about our big recent launch of App Search on Elastic Cloud.
</p><h2>But first, a new name</h2><p>You may have noticed we’ve up-leveled <a href="https://www.elastic.co/enterprise-search">Elastic Enterprise Search</a> as the new “umbrella” solution name that encompasses our suite of search products: Elastic App Search, Elastic Site Search, and Elastic Workplace Search (the product formerly known as Enterprise Search — more on that later).
</p><p><img src="https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/blt583719d86319a2d6/5e3c6e3d8a407162a896a2c8/enterprise-search-7-6-products-blog.jpg" data-sys-asset-uid="blt583719d86319a2d6" alt="Enterprise Search product overview" style="display: block; margin: auto;">
</p><p>The new name reflects our belief that to bring modern search experiences to market quickly they must be enterprise-ready to scale on day one. They also need to support all different types of users — web visitors, customers, employees, partners, app users — with the scale, speed, and relevance you’ve come to expect from all Elastic products.
</p><p>Many of you may have even known — and used — these products under the Swiftype brand.
</p><p>Now all Elastic Enterprise Search products are in sync with new Elastic Stack releases. So going forward you can expect unified Enterprise Search release feature announcements like the one you’re reading now.
</p><h2>Off to the (Elastic) clouds we go with App Search on Elastic Cloud</h2><p>Elastic App Search is already a go-to for its ease of adding dynamic, powerful search experiences to your corporate website, customer support portal, internal help desk, SaaS application, or mobile app. With App Search 7.6, we’ve now extended those full App Search capabilities to the Elastic Cloud with <a href="https://elastic.co/blog/elastic-app-search-now-available-on-elasticsearch-service">App Search on Elastic Cloud</a>. So deploy App Search anywhere Elastic Cloud runs (24 regions, and counting) with global cloud partners GCP, AWS, and Azure.
</p><div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9 shadow m-t-40 m-b-40">
	<div class="vsc-controller" data-vscid="9zhmcsih5">
	</div><video autoplay="autoplay" playsinline="playsinline" muted="muted" loop="loop" data-vscid="9zhmcsih5"><source src="https://assets.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/blt9f7ae96efc52ea08/5e3c82b3c77dbe6512a25786/app-search-on-elastic-cloud.mp4" type="video/mp4"></video>
</div><p>It’s really as simple as point and click to get up and running with an App Search deployment inside the Elastic Cloud console.
</p><p>If you’d like to dive in deeper, we’ve created some handy <a href="https://www.elastic.co/blog/getting-started-with-elastic-app-search-on-elasticsearch-service">step-by-step content</a> to walk you through setting up your first App Search on Elastic Cloud deployment. Or <a href="https://www.elastic.co/webinars/getting-started-with-elastic-app-search">check out our live Getting Started with Elastic App Search webinar</a>, which will cover the ins and outs of setup, fine-tuning your search experience, and scaling it out as you grow.
</p><p>Already using App Search? Learn how to upgrade to 7.6 in this helpful <a href="/blog/how-to-upgrade-elastic-app-search">step-by-step blog</a>.
</p><h2>More autonomy and scalability options with meta engines
</h2><p>As your business needs become more complex and you deploy more and more search engines across your web properties, managing all of the engines spread across business units and use cases can be difficult. To alleviate these challenges, App Search 7.6 introduces meta engines for both App Search on Elastic Cloud and self-managed versions. This feature is available for Platinum and Enterprise subscription levels.
</p><p>Meta engines provide the ability to search across multiple engines by selecting which existing sub-engines to include in the new meta engine. This allows large companies to unify and scale their search while still allowing admins complete control over the behavior of each individual sub-engine.
</p><p>For example, if your company has a separate engine for Division A, another one for Division B, and a third engine for Division C, users can now create a top-level meta engine — with its own independent tuning, relevance rules, boosting, and curations — that searches over the content indexed within the three underlying engines. Meta engines are “document-less” engines that query the indexes in existing sub-engines, alleviating the need to index content multiple times even when use cases vary.
</p><p>Beyond improved scalability, meta engines also give individual managers of these sub-engines more autonomy to create their own tuning setting, relevance controls, and curations.
</p><div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9 shadow m-t-40 m-b-40">
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	</div><video autoplay="autoplay" playsinline="playsinline" muted="muted" loop="loop" data-vscid="stt5jzb5z"><source src="https://assets.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/bltb8a999ffeeb59713/5e3d79220ee5056ab4d87540/app-search-meta-engines-7-6.mp4" type="video/mp4"></video>
</div><h2>That’s not all</h2><p>Elastic Workplace Search — the product formerly known as Enterprise Search — remains beta software. Head to the <a href="https://www.elastic.co/downloads/enterprise-search">Elastic Workplace Search download page</a> to grab the latest binary and follow the installation instructions to start connecting content sources.
</p><p>In the 7.6 release, we’re making your IT Ops team very happy with the support of security assertion markup language (SAML) protocol. So if your organization leverages single sign-on (SSO), you can now manage and provide access to Elastic Workplace Search using SAML.
</p><h2>Try it out!</h2><p>Existing Elastic Cloud customers can access App Search directly from the <a href="https://cloud.elastic.co/">Elastic Cloud console</a> today. New to the Elastic Cloud? Start a <a href="https://www.elastic.co/app-search">free 14-day trial of App Search on Elastic Cloud</a>. Or <a href="https://www.elastic.co/downloads/app-search">download</a> the self-managed version of App Search.
</p><p>Links:
</p><p><a href="https://www.elastic.co/downloads/enterprise-search">Workplace Search (beta) download page</a>
</p><p><a href="https://www.elastic.co/app-search">App Search on Elastic Cloud - 14-day free trial</a>
</p><p><a href="https://www.elastic.co/downloads/app-search">App Search self-managed version</a>
</p>

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Elastic Enterprise Search updates for 7.6.0

Learn about new Result Settings, performance improvements, Metricbeat monitoring, and more.

<p>We’re pleased to announce the release of Elastic App Search 7.5.0 — available as a <a href="/app-search/service?baymax=elastic-web&elektra=blog&rogue=750-release">managed service</a> or as a <a href="/downloads/app-search?baymax=elastic-web&elektra=blog&rogue=750-release">download</a>. This release features new Result Settings, performance improvements, a Metricbeat monitoring module for App Search, and API logs and analytics available in Elastic Common Schema.
</p> <strong><h2>Optimized response times and improved search experiences with Result Settings</h2></strong><p>The default fields returned and highlighted with a query response can now be controlled in the App Search dashboard, so you can optimize query performance and improve search experiences. See the <a href="/blog/elastic-app-search-performant-rich-search-results-with-result-settings?baymax=elastic-web&elektra=blog&rogue=750-release">Result Settings release post</a> for more details.
</p><p><img src="https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/bltcfc4104332a3f8e4/5dcd68d8d5a8797b8fa119fc/app-search-7-5-result-settings-blog.jpg" data-sys-asset-uid="bltcfc4104332a3f8e4" alt="Result Settings UI" style="display: block; margin: auto;">
</p><strong><h2>Performance improvements via merged processes, queue management and logging reduction</h2></strong><p>We've merged all App Search processes into one, which means better resource utilization and performance. (Previously, there were three processes: the core server, a worker process, and a Filebeat instance for analytics and event logging.)
</p><p>Additionally, we’ve made significant improvements in requests queue management that allow App Search to handle higher request loads and fail gracefully if load limits are reached.
</p><p>But that’s not all. We've also removed the health check from App Search logs and added an option to slim down health checks, so users can exclude queue state information from the results. This improves performance by reducing the load on the underlying Elasticsearch clusters. To access this lightweight version of the health check, pass a <code>?verbose=false</code> flag to the health API endpoint.
</p> <strong><h2><strong>Monitoring capabilities with the Metricbeat App Search module</strong></h2><p>We’ve added an App Search module for Metricbeat, so monitoring can be done within the Elastic Stack. The module calls App Search’s health API endpoint and provides various stats, including:
</p><ul>
	<li>JVM memory usage</li>
	<li>Queue counts</li>
	<li>API and dashboard response times</li>
	<li>Request rate</li>
</ul><p>Check out the <a href="/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/7.5/metricbeat-module-appsearch.html?baymax=elastic-web&elektra=blog&rogue=750-release">Metricbeat docs</a> for details on how to add the App Search module.
</p> <strong><h2>API logs and analytics available in Elastic Common Schema</h2></strong><p>App Search API logs and analytics are now available in <a href="/blog/introducing-the-elastic-common-schema?baymax=elastic-web&elektra=blog&rogue=750-release">Elastic Common Schema</a> (ECS), so you can analyze your App Search logs alongside any other data in applications like Elastic SIEM.
</p><p>To toggle logs and analytics in ECS, simply update <code>app-search.yml</code> to include the following:
</p><pre class="prettyprint">enable_ecs_logs: true
</pre> <strong><h2>See it in action</h2></strong><p>App Search 7.5 provides the search and tooling for a great search experience that’s now even more performant and measurable. <a href="/downloads/app-search?baymax=elastic-web&elektra=blog&rogue=750-release">Download it today</a> to give it a try!
</p></strong>

Articles by Nick Chow

Migrating from Swiftype App Search to Elastic Cloud

Elastic Enterprise Search updates for 7.6.0

Elastic App Search 7.5.0 released

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