Google Search Appliance Deployment Governance and Operational Models - Manual (Page 10)

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Depending on the IT landscape at your organization, this model might imply that the GSA deployment
may not be in compliance with all IT governance policies in place, in areas such as audit, branding,
platform, architecture, and so on. Search deployed within such a model might have the implicit restriction
of not being able to expand to repositories controlled outside of the business unit. This model is very good
for special-purpose search applications that are serving to a particular set of users that may not be
representative of the entire enterprise.
Cost model
Deployment of the GSA by an individual business unit can be funded by calculating the cost to procure
the GSA as well as the effort it would take to craft the solution. A support model would also have to be
developed.
Even though the s earch solution would be deployed and owned by a business unit, it may be most
efficient to document certain processes and outsource ongoing support to a third party according to any
outsourcing precedents within the company (either in-house or third-party).
Ownership by a third party in a hosted environment
It might make sense for an organization to outsource the GSA search solution completely to a third-party
hosting provider. This model can be defined by the following two general approaches:
● Define and
d evelop the solution in house, and transition operations to a third party.
● Procure
services from a third party to help define and develop the solution as well as host it going
forward or choose from a third party’s plain GSA search hosted offering.
Such an agreement with a third party should be pursued according to existing vendor procurement
guidelines and precedents.
This model is advantageous because a third party provider that specializes in GSA search will already
have resources and infrastructure to develop and provide search. This approach also has the advantage
of keeping costs down. A downside can be flexibility and ease of deep integration with existing systems.
This may not be a fit in highly secure environments with requirements for the on-premise storage of
sensitive data.
Cost model
You should consider the cost models of ownership by individual business units and ownership by a
centralized IT organization and evaluate them against the proposed cost for a hosting solution by a third
party. As this model is governed by the terms and conditions of a provider agreement, all aspects should
be negotiated and settled up front.
An important aspect to the agreement would be the support model as well as applicable service level
agreements. Depending on the agreement in place, this model may be more attractive in terms of up front
costs, but may offer less solution flexibility going forward.