Search: Habits vs Environments
June 2, 2008
In 1980, when you launched the Dialog Information Service search function, the system dumped you into a database about education. From that starting point, you entered a file number. Experienced searchers memorized file numbers; type b 15 and you would be “in” the ABI / INFORM business information file. Type b 16 and you would be able to search PROMT, a collection of business data. Dialog never saw bulletin board systems or the Internet coming.
People fortunate enough to have the money and technical savvy could become online searchers. The technology was sufficiently clumsy and the entire process so unfamiliar to most people as to make online searching an arcane art. Searching in those early days was handled by an intermediary. When I first learned about online databases at Booz, Allen & Hamilton in 1976, the intermediary was the New York office’s boss. I would call the intermediary, explain what I needed, provide a project number, and pick up the outputs on weird thermal paper later that day. As clumsy and expensive as the process was, it was more efficient than doing research with paper journals, printed books, and the horrific microfilm.
By 1983, Dialog had found a market for its mainframe-based search system–librarians. Librarians had two characteristics that MBAs, lawyers, and folks trained in brochure making lacked. First, librarians chose a discipline that required an ability to think about categories. Librarians also understood the importance of having a standard way to identify authors, titles, and subjects.
Second, librarians had a budget to meet the needs of people described as an “end user”. Some of my Booz, Allen colleagues would rush into our corporate library and demand, “Give me everything on ECCS!”
The approach taken by Systems Development (SDC Orbit), BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Service), DataStar, and the handful of other online vendors was monetized in clever ways. First, a company would pay money to sign up to get a password. Second, the company would send the librarian to training programs. Most programs were free and taught tips and tricks to tame the naked command line. No graphical user interface.
You had to memorize command strings like this one.SS UD=9999 and CC=76?. The system then spit out the most recent records about marketing. The key point is not the complexity. The point is that you had to form specific habits to make the system work. Make an error and the system would deliver nothing useful. Search and retrieval was part puzzle, part programming, and part memorization. At the time, I believed that these habits would be difficult to break. I think the vendors saw their users as hooked on online in the way a life long smoker is hooked on nicotine.
The vendors were wrong. The “habit” was not a habit. The systems were confining, hellishly expensive, and complicated to such a degree that change was hard for vendor. Change for the people who knew how to search was easy. The automatic behavior that worked so well in 1980 began to erode when PCs became available. When the first browser became available, the old solid gold revenue streams started to slip. The intermediaries who controlled online were disintermediated. The stage was set for the Internet, lowest-common-denominator searching, and graphical interfaces. The Internet offered useful information for free. I have dozens of examples of online budgets slashed or eliminated because neither the vendor nor the information professional could explain the value of online information. A visible, direct cost with no proof of payback crippled the original online industry. Many of the companies continue to hang on today, but these firms are in a race that is debilitating. Weaker companies in the commercial database business will find survival more and more difficult.
The notion of online habits persists. There’s a view that once a user has learned one way to perform an online or digital task, it’s game over for competitors. That’s not true. New customer constituencies come into being, and the people skilled in complex, specialized systems can carve out a niche. But hockey stick growth and fat margins are increasingly unlikely for traditional information companies.
Northern Light: High-Quality Information Fuels SaaS Growth
June 2, 2008
David Seuss, founder of Northern Light, revealed in an interview with ArnoldIT.com that its focus on high-quality information is fueling the company’s growth. The company provides search, point-and-click access, and reports via its platform.
Northern Light SinglePoint is a custom, hosted, turnkey solution for strategic research portal applications. Northern Light is one of the leaders in software-as-a-service (SaaS) information access. The company offers a custom, hosted, turn key solution for strategic research portal applications.
He said:
[Northern Light developed] search technology optimized for searching published documents and research reports, and providing effective solutions for research portals for professional users. … We are a technology services provider in addition to being a technology developer.
The company’s business model is anchored in the SinglePoint portal. He said:
A typical SinglePoint portal has 12 external licensed research subscriptions from content suppliers … and one or more internal primary research repositories… SinglePoint is a hosted turnkey solution in which Northern Light provides content integration, search technology, text analytics (MI Analyst), Enterprise 2.0 collaboration (SinglePoint Connects), user interface, search alerts, document and user authentication, administration system, and hosting.
More information about Northern Light’s services are here. This page also features the names of some of Northern Light’s licensees. You can access the full text of this interview here. The interview is part of the Search Engine Wizards’ speak series. You can read the full-text of interviews with more than a dozen search executives here
Stephen Arnold, June 2, 2008
Google Tells Everyone: We Are Human
June 2, 2008
Techmeme has a link to the New York Times’ story “The Human Hands behind the Google Money Machine”. There’s also a link to the useful commentary by Henry Blodget, Silicon Valley Insider. By the time you read this, the comments and analyses of Google’s summer openness will be one of day’s key stories.
Last week there were the interviews and postings about Google I/O conference for developers. The best summary I’ve seen is by CNet. Stephen Shankland’s “We’re All Guinea Pigs in Google’s Search Experiment” and his “Google Spotlights Data Center Inner Workings.” Anand Rajaraman provided a technically-significant scoop about Google’s reluctance to rely exclusively on autonomous software. My post is here. The Datawocky piece is here. (I’ve heard that some Googlers call the Google infrastructure “the borg”.)
The flow of information is useful. As I thought about stream of information, I forced myself to step back and ask, “Why now?” Google has never been particularly forthcoming, and its public-facing representatives “run the game plan”. If you haven’t heard that phrase, it means, “Stick to the script.” At conferences, I’ve watched Googlers thrust into a presentation at the last minute struggle through the script.
Here are my thoughts about this new direction:
- The Google sees an opportunity to position itself a thoughtful leader. The emphasis on people shifts the discussion from monitoring clicks and algorithms to people who think about the implications of technology and market needs.
- The messages focus on what Google is doing. The examples say to me, “Hey, guys, we’re doing these things now.” For a competitor, the positioning of activities as actions based on what’s in place may be chilling. It begs the question, “What’s next?”
- Google is maturing, and its management is confident that messages for users, developers, advertisers, and competitors will increase Google’s presence in the market.
What do you think is behind this new transparency? It’s visible in Eric Schmidt’s remarks about mobile advertising , reported by Seeking Alpha, and his earlier comment in the U.K. Telegraph that Google’s founders have grown up. You can read this story here. and enjoy its now-obligatory picture of Messrs. Brin and Page lounging on some of Google’s signature fluffy furniture.
My take is that Google’s management is not behaving in a spontaneous manner. Just as a series of steps makes an algorithm work, this flood of information has my radar oscilloscope flickering. I think the mathematical logic so prized at Google is at work. I’m watching for signs of a big event in the Googlesphere. Semantic Web? Data management? Major buyout close to completion? Maybe.
Controlled transparency is a signal, not an end in itself.
Stephen Arnold, June 2, 2008
IBM: Watching Cloud Patterns
June 1, 2008
Last week, IBM announced a cloud-based, software as a service initiative. IBM has partners in this venture, which appears to focus on the insurance niche. The announcement appeared in a news release, and you can read it here.
IBM has teamed with Millbrook, Inc., whose core business is software integration for the insurance industry. Another party to the deal is Sapiens America Corp. Sapiens (whose corporate family tree is pretty complicated) is another specialist with a core competency in property and casualty.
IBM will use its Cognos 8 Business Intelligence system and the Sapiens Insight software. Both systems will make use of the Millbrook property and casualty model.
The idea is that small- and mid-sized insurance agencies will be have access to industrial-strength business intelligence systems without any on premises software. The three companies said in their release:
Business intelligence and predictive analytics tools are becoming the strategic mainstay of how service enterprises in general, and insurance carriers in particular, conduct their daily business. Companies that have near real-time ability to analyze the entirety of their captured business data and extract key performance indicators and accurate answers to “what-if” scenarios can be more responsive to a rapidly evolving business environment and can competitively maximize profitable operations while moving away from risky propositions.
The announcement struck me as significant step for IBM. IBM has been a player in online and cloud-based services for quite a while. In the late 1990s, IBM Global Network ramped up as an Internet service provider eventually selling that business to AT&T. IBM made some noise several years ago about its grid computing capability. Its AlphaWorks initiative has pushed cloud computing as well. Now IBM is testing the water for niche-focused SaaS or Software as a Service. IBM and its new pal Google are working cooperatively on an educational project to stimulate the flow of programmers with expertise in writing programs for distributed systems.
My thought is that this SaaS warrants observation. On paper and in white board “what if” sessions, IBM could deploy a number its software systems as cloud-based services. The question is, “What’s next in online services for IBM?” Will IBM, like Google, sit on the sidelines and watch Amazon.com, Salesforce.com, and other companies push this market forward?
Stephen Arnold, June 1, 2008
Related story from InfoWorld here.
IN-Q-TEL Investments: 2006 to April 2008
June 1, 2008
This table brings the summary of IN-Q-TEL investments through April 2008. You can access the investments from 2000 to 2003 here. The investments from 2004 and 2005 are here.
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