The "search engine" component of a purpose-built archive solution is frequently brushed over by vendors and customers alike because, although core to the benefits provided by an application, it is not as flashy as some of the other functions highlighted during the buying and selling processes. Most archive buyers view the application as a means of saving information rather than accessing it. But purpose-built archives are now relied upon by knowledge workers (retrieving old messages), attorneys (producing evidence), and compliance officers (fulfilling audit requests) for information access. Disrupting these processes is likely to have a substantial negative impact on the company in terms of productivity and risk.

While search engines have to scale to meet more demanding access needs and bigger archives, they must fundamentally function properly in terms of producing accurate results, especially when organizations are using them within compliance and e-discovery processes. The balance between performance of a search engine and accuracy is critical for a maximum payback for any archive investment.

With the release of Enterprise Vault 10 Symantec has delivered a 64-bit archive solution that aims to meet the performance requirements of large archive systems while also maintaining accurate data retrieval results. ESG Lab tested the query results of Enterprise Vault 9 with version 10 indexes to verify the accuracy of data retrievals when upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit indexes.