In the past, site search at Univé was powered by an on-premise search database, which stored web pages, PDF files, and other documents. But adding database content was a time consuming and manual process. As a result, new content was sometimes delayed or even lost. Maintenance was also a drain on resources. Every month in-house developers spent up to three days adding new features or resolving technical issues. As the volume of Univé’s digital content expanded, these challenges also grew and the IT department began to investigate alternatives to the on-premise solution.
“We had several criteria for a new search platform, but most of all we wanted to transfer responsibility for installation, development, and maintenance to a partner organization, reduce burdens on our in-house team, and lower costs compared to an on-premise solution,” said van Mier.
Univé sought the advice of its long-time IT partner, Atos, which recommended Elastic Enterprise Search deployed as an Elastic Cloud SaaS solution. Atos also advised using Elastic’s built-in dashboard tool for data analytics and visualization.