Apache Solr vs. IBM Watson Discovery

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Solr
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Apache Solr is an open-source enterprise search server.N/A
IBM Watson Discovery
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
IBM offers Watson Discovery, a natural language processing (NLP) application with options to measure sentiment, detect entities, semantic roles, and other concepts.N/A
Pricing
Apache SolrIBM Watson Discovery
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache SolrIBM Watson Discovery
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache SolrIBM Watson Discovery
Best Alternatives
Apache SolrIBM Watson Discovery
Small Businesses
Yext
Yext
Score 8.9 out of 10
Yext
Yext
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Guru
Guru
Score 9.5 out of 10
Guru
Guru
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Guru
Guru
Score 9.5 out of 10
Guru
Guru
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache SolrIBM Watson Discovery
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache SolrIBM Watson Discovery
Likelihood to Recommend
Very effective for end-user searching applications and for generating search results. Also very well suited to those looking for high reliability and performance. If [you're doing] fuzzy searching or if you are working on a smaller end-user application or an internal application that does not require high performance and flexible/adapting searching then it may not be necessary to use Solr.
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Whether using it as a standalone search tool, integrating with other IBM Watson products, or using the API to integrate with proprietary or third-party systems and applications, Watson Discovery addresses these and many other scenarios where document search is required -- understand- if here documents can be pdf, doc, txt files, websites, among other formats --, don't confuse Watson Discovery with EDRMS (Electronic document and records management system) software, Discovery goes further, allowing text search to be done within a context using natural language (NLU) and returning not only the search term but also insights and related issues. File indexing works very well, and training Discovery so that documents and technical terms are learned a bit of work, but it can be reduced by using some of the learning models already trained and available for use.
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Pros
  • Faceted navigation and field collapsing/grouping : filtering and quick results were what we needed for our websites. Our customers needed to have this functionalities for good and efficient results.
  • We tested them with our customers' registered searches (they received all new goods matching with their registered searches by emails and/or mobile push). Results were incredible by comparison with our old system (old MySQL requests).
  • Note : we didn't put all our data in Solr. Just what we need for searching uses. Other data stayed in our MySQL database.
  • Auto-suggest : our old auto-suggest wasn't performing well. With Apache Solr, our new one was worked really well ! The suggestions came quickly and suggestions were good.
  • We also extended auto-suggestion with geo-spatial data and it worked well.
  • Hit highlighting : we used this functionality and we didn't have problem and nasty surprise.
  • Keep all data status during data upgrading (see next details for improvements)
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  • Help us analyse and extract useful data points and insights.
  • Powerful API which is both fast and accurate.
  • Can analyse almost every type of file including word, pdf, excel, txt etc.
  • No need to hire anyone or a freelancer to extract the data.
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Cons
  • Ease of use -- this is not always the easier platform to configure.
  • Developer Community -- There are not a whole lot of folks out there that understand this stuff so finding talent is difficult.
  • Drupal 8 -- We've been frustrated with slow development on APIs for Drupal 8 integration.
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  • I believe AI should be more flexible about providing data. However, it's understandable that you need to provide the details you need in a more specific and detailed way.
  • The interface could use more tweaking. Being new to the program, it was kind of hard to navigate.
  • Luckily, there was a customized feature of the dashboard that I could set up, and having something that you know where you are placed always feels familiar and comfortable.
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Usability
It takes some time to deploy and currectly maintein it. And also, to learn how to use and integrate in the enviroment as well. Once you get theses steps done, it usability is very simple, and almost of the time it don't require no further attention on it. Even for maintence, if you deploy it on a cluster mode, it is very reliable and easy to take one host down.
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IBM Watson Discovery has the best user capabilities and easily transform business decision-making portfolio. The automation system saves time used in data analysis as opposed to manual research that consumes a lot of time. The visualization across the dashboard enables my team to interpret complex data and use it to make reliable marketing decisions.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
Similar to all IBM Watson and Salesforce product solutions, the overall support would be a 10/10. Their provided FAQ's help with frequently experienced issues and if still unable to figure something out, their customer service representatives are always super responsive. With instant chat functions available, it is easy to ask a quick question rather than sitting on hold.
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Alternatives Considered
We switched from search indexes stored in MySQL to soar and it's made a world of difference for our growing businesses. The relational databases are very poor for handling the complex data searches require and Solr delivered all the tools we need to get the performance our end users are demanding.
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To be entirely honest, in my review, I have used Elasticsearch in the past, but not in a way similar to that I am using Discovery, and I cannot honestly say that I can compare the two because I used Elasticsearch in infrastructure management and monitoring setup while using the ELK stack (Elasticsearch - Logstash and Kibana).
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Return on Investment
  • It's enabled us to deliver fast, relevant search results on our new website. The site is still in beta and being actively developed so our complete ROI is still unknown.
  • It integrates very well with Drupal so it has saved us from having to develop a custom solution.
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  • IBM Watson Discovery has had only positive impacts on our overall business objective of providing quality customer service and timely resolutions for our clients.
  • The use of this integration has made life easier for our customer service team, who can now resolve cases for customers quicker and easier.
  • Our company prides itself on the service and expertise we're able to provide for our customers and IBM Watson Discovery has only made that task easier for our employees to perform.
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ScreenShots