Beyond Search

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I have done a bit more thinking about the search-related implications of Apple’s first quarter 2012 results. Google remains dominant in search. But I am formulating the hypothesis that Google is now on a knife edge and may already have started to slide down search mountain.

A happy quack to Net Giant.

Straight away let me say that Apple is happy with “good enough search.” I have had conflicting information about Apple’s apparent indifference to search and retrieval. If you want to locate a particular category of books in the iTunes’ online service, good luck. From its earliest days, the search function in iTunes has been less than satisfactory to me. But who cares? iTunes is part of the software fabric which Apple has woven right in front of Google’s, Amazon’s, and the entertainment industries’ snoots. Apple could not have been more upfront about search. Search is simply not Job One for an iTunes’ user. Why should it be? The service helps Apple generate revenues which have even the greediest MBA drooling.

I read “Apple’s Massive Numbers and Some Context.” My viewpoint is different, but I agree that something big has happened in the numbers and beyond. Here’s the passage I noted:

Towards the end of the earnings call, Tim Cook dropped a huge nugget of information: led by 15 million iPads sold last quarter, the tablet market is now larger than the entire desktop PC market. Someday in the not-too-distant future, the tablet market will be bigger than all of the PC market, he predicts. (Apple has sold 55 million iPads since the original launch in April 2010, Cook revealed.)

Need more proof? Read “Apple Reports First Quarter Results. Highest Quarterly Revenue and Earnings Ever. All-Time Record iPhone, iPad, and Mac Sales.” You can find many pundits, poobahs, and disinformationists explaining why Apple is generating so much dough, selling so many gizmos, and achieving at least momentarily the highest market capitalization in the history of greed.

But there’s an important aspect of these revenue figures which caught my attention. Here’s the point:

Apple has downsized, marginalized, and subordinated search across its range of products. Key word search is a desktop search service. The youth of the world has moved on.

Why is this important to me? Here are the reasons:

Search is now a tertiary operation. Top finding methods are apps. Then there are Web pages with exposed links or facets. Last is good old key word search. Yep, it is time to forget the search as the reason a person uses some type of electronic gizmo. I want to make a distinction between “findability” and “search”. Apple does a pretty good job of making information findable. Whether it is the native search function in OS X or the hot links scattered across Web pages and applications or mobile apps themselves, most folks regardless of age can make Apple machines work. Forget where a document is? Apple provides numerous “punch-the-button, dummy” options.

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Interviews

Last week I was able to interview Gilles Andre, the chief executive officer, of PolySpot late in November and then last week. Mr. Andre joined PolySpot in June 2010. Prior to this, Gilles  was co-founder and CEO of Augure, a company engaged in e-reputation management and services. Mr. Andre was also the founder of Leonard’s Logic suite in 1997 (software editor of Genio ETL). Acquired by Hummingbird in 1999. Mr. Andre is board member at Talend, recognized market leader in open source middleware solutions.

PolySpot is a provider of open search solutions. The company offers a robust and innovative architecture which supports search-centric applications accessible from any device connected to a client’s network.

I was interested in Mr. Andre’s view of PolySpot. The search and content processing sector is in transition, and the role of open source solutions continues to gain traction. He told me:

PolySpot’s agile framework, its use of open source technology like Lucene, and a focus on putting information in the business work flow. Olivier Lefassy, David Fischer – our CTO – and I had designed some interesting ideas, and I was eager to fine tune these elements into a business model that would propel PolySpot over the hurdles which cause many enterprise information solutions to fail.

With open source making in roads at IBM and other major technology providers, I asked about Mr. Andre’s involvement in the “communities” which play an important role in the sector. He told me:

When I was board member at Talend, a very successful French initiative in the ETL [extract, transform, load] segment from inception in 2006 to December 2010, I came to understand the potential of open source software. PolySpot gives me a chance to leverage my knowledge about fast growth, high potential companies, open source software, and the “big data” opportunity around us. I think you can say that data management and information are woven throughout my business fabric.

The PolySpot approach boasts a robust framework. I asked what PolySpot has constructed around Lucene, the open source search system:

We build the connectors I mentioned before and a connector software development kit. We engineered out proprietary transformation and enrichment platform (that’s the Sense Builder components) which adds intelligence to raw information. We also developed a very innovative end to end administration console enabling to design and maintain search applications with no particular technical skill, this eases Lucene and Solr configuration but also amplifies the search functionalities provided by Solr. Last, we have added display modules, information views, and graphical user interfaces. These can easily be customized. To make it brief, PolySpot delivers the first end-to-end packaged search infrastructure over Lucene and SOLR core technologies.

After seeing several demonstrations of client deployments, I was impressed with the PolySpot technology. To learn more about PolySpot’s solutions and technical approach, navigate to www.polyspot.com. The full text of the interview with Mr. Andre is located in the ArnoldIT’s series Search Wizards Speak at this link.

Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2011

Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search

SurfRay

Not every SharePoint suite is deployed for a multi-million dollar corporation; often the program is used by small businesses to connect their users and their content. These small businesses sometimes do not have a team of IT staff running around; instead it is just one person with a computer. NothingButSharePoint.com wrote about the, “Three Top Resources for SharePoint End Users.” Mark Miller was constantly being asked what resources were good for the beginning end user.

He first found The SharePoint Shepherd’s Guide for End Users, which is along the lines of SharePoint for Dummies. It is free of technical jargon and made for the novice end user who does not know anything about SharePoint. SlideShare.net is another useful tool where experts post their slideshows at major conferences. As of this article writing there are over 16,023 with 69 specifically in mind for end users. It is a good way to learn how to get started and find more resources to help. Lastly, he recommends Twitter. Apparently, it is how most of the SharePoint community exchanges information, so do a quick Twitter search and you will find an entire repository of knowledge.

“It’s not necessary to participate in the quick exchanges, but just by virtue of having an account and tracking the people who talk about SharePoint daily, you’ll have an inside track when it’s time for you to ask a question that’s bee stumping you.”

Miller didn’t mention anything about enterprise search, but SharePoint’s out-of-the-box search doesn’t meet the requirements for most end users. SurfRay’s Ontolica Suite is a precise and quick way to find content, which is a boon for new end users if they are still navigating the SharePoint waters.

Whitney Grace, January 27, 2012