The University currently uses a hardware-based Google Search Appliance (GSA) to index all of the webpages on uwaterloo.ca as well as a percentage of sub-domains of uwaterloo.ca. Current search requires the indexing of HTML content and files of various types including (but not limited to) PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Any replacement should also be capable of integration with LDAP to perform “people” searches. The current GSA does not perform internal authenticated searches though any replacement should be capable of this functionality. The current GSA also does not perform SharePoint/OneDrive searches though any replacement should be capable of this functionality.
Our current GSA licensing accommodates up to 1 million indexed documents (HTML pages, PDFs, Word documents, etc.) per appliance. The production GSA handles approximately 6,000 queries per day. Search results are proxied from the GSA through to https://uwaterloo.ca/search.
We currently license two GSAs, one acts as the primary production appliance while the second acts as a combination hot spare/development appliance. The license for our primary GSA is set to expire on April 1, 2019* and the license for our secondary GSA expires March 23, 2019. The University has a requirement to maintain search functionality currently provided by the GSA; therefore, the University requires a working replacement (with better or equivalent functionality) for the GSA on or before March 8, 2019 in order to minimize business interruption. The university intends to find a new solution (appliance or cloud-based) through this RFP.
