SharePoint: The Digital Maginot Line
June 19, 2008
Internet News has a must read story about Microsoft SharePoint here. Richard Adhika’s “Search, Social Networking Key in SharePoint” nails the identify crisis that Microsoft faces with this server product. SharePoint is search and social networking, The story casts into sharp relief that SharePoint is a polymorphic product. With millions of users, three flavors of search, and dozens of Certified Gold Partners selling add ins and add ons SharePoint is important to Microsoft.
To me the most interesting statement in the essay is:
Echoing statements by analysts and other vendors, he said the danger is that the millennials working in enterprises will “turn to outside services on the Internet,” which may breach compliance regulations and spur fears about information leaking outside the organization. Corporate IT is “increasingly thinking about how to build an internal social networking platform,” Koenigsbauer said, adding that SharePoint Server 2007 provides native support for wikis (define) and blogs, and lets users push content to mobile devices.
SharePoint, if I interpret Mr. Koenigsbauer’s comments as intended, suggests that SharePoint is a Maginot line, the line of concrete fortifications designed to protect France from Germany. Perhaps SharePoint in its search and collaborative form will work.
Stephen Arnold, June 19, 2008
Fast Search: Is This a Real License Document?
June 19, 2008
I was updating my Fast Search & Transfer files. Over the last two months, I have noticed that certain information has been removed from the Fast Search Web site. I ran my crawler scripts and saw in the hit list this link:
http://contracts.onecle.com/findwhat/fast.lic.shtml
I am not familiar with onecle.com, so I ran a whois search. The owner of the domain is listed with some data that are not particularly helpful The title of the Web site to which the domain points is “California MCLE, CLE and Continuing Legal Education.” The purpose of the Web site seems to be to provide sample agreements for people to examine.
What interested me is this document which you can view if you click here. It appears to me, and I am not an attorney and have zero qualifications to do anything other than obey the law, that this agreement sets forth the terms for a deal between FindWhat.com and Fast Search & Transfer. FindWhat.com has become MIVA, which is a vendor of pay-for-click software and services.
The Onecle splash screen. Access to the site is here.
Because I am not certain of the provenance of this sample license agreement, I will not reproduce it here. However, there were three parts of the agreement that I found interesting. Let me highlight each of these points and then offer several observations about my understanding of each. You will need to print out the entire agreement or have it one your screen as you read my post. I am not going to quote more than a sentence from the source document just as I would have done in the 7th grade when I wrote my first term paper. Miss Soapes was quite negative about using work by another as one’s own.
The Three Points
1. Maintenance and Support
The $7 million license fee may be bogus. I heard that Fast Search licensing began in the $175,000 to $250,000 range and could go higher depending on the customer’s requirements. But $7 million seems high to me. But set that questionable number aside. The agreement says in 4. Maintenance and Support:
Customer shall purchase maintenance and support services from FAST with respect to all software licensed hereunder for a three year term
The fee, if I understand this correctly, is the starting point. Additional fees will be assessed to maintain the system and support it. I learned that most enterprise software vendors charge anywhere from 15 – 25 percent of the license fee for maintenance and support, I think the cost of the installation jumps significantly. I also believe that customization of the system adds to the cost.
A segment of the alleged Fast Search license agreement. Full document is here.
What baffles me is that Fast Search stumbled into financial difficulty because revenue did not flow into the company quickly enough to off set its costs. My thought is that customers signed a deal and then balked at paying when the system could not be set up, made operational quickly, and then supported at the specified rates. Whatever the license fee, I think it was not enough to free Fast Search from of financial pressure.
2. Schedule B: Service Level Objectives
Fast Search spells out that the customer must try to figure out what the problem is. Okay, that’s reasonable. However, Fast Search then limits who can contact Fast Search about the problem. You will find this language in Schedule B, Paragraph A. The point that hit me is that if the “standard support” is not what the customer needs, then the licensee can sign up for “Premium Support”. Again more charges to make a system work. Furthermore, Fast Search offers “Resolution Objectives”. When I read these, I concluded that Fast Search may not be able to fix some problems; therefore, a work around may be provided. Some work arounds can take up to a month. My thought was that if I am using Fast Search to generate revenue for my company, I cannot be offline or down for a month. I would say, “This software is supposed to work, right?” I am not certain if procurement teams poke their noses into the legal documents for an enterprise search acquisition. An attorney, unfamiliar with information access systems, might overlook these nuances of support. When a problem arises, I can see that it would reach a flash point quickly as the procurement team tries to get the system working only to be told that the caller is not on the list and that the fix may take a month.
3. Schedule D and Schedule E: Customer Competitors and Fast Search Competitors
My thought, when I saw these lists, was that these are not timely, which casts doubt on the authenticity of this sample license agreement. On the other hand, I wondered if a licensee’s legal department would review an agreement such as this and routinely update the “you cannot work with these people” lists. Now that Microsoft owns Fast Search, I think Fast Search licensees need to revisit their agreements and I assume that the Microsoft-Fast Search team will be contacting licensees to update these lists. What I found interesting is that Fast Search listed Microsoft as a competitor along with Google, Yahoo, Verity, Autonomy, Convera, and Endeca. Now Microsoft owns Fast Search, and it will be interesting to see if a sample license agreement becomes available.
Observations
I have two observations about this agreement, which may not be a legitimate contract:
First, the fees seem designed to produce significant revenue. That is okay as long as the system works. When the system does not work, the fees become an issue. Big companies with big bills owed to Fast Search may quit paying. The alleged financial difficulties may be a result of big companies not paying their bills.
Second, I will be most interested in any changes in Fast Search’s pricing and business policies under Microsoft ownership. The changes may reveal the approach Microsoft will take with the Fast ESP technology.
If you have insights, or simply wish to disagree with me, use the comments section on the Web log.
Stephen Arnold
June 19, 2008
Forbes on Powerset
June 19, 2008
Forbes Magazine has an interesting article about Powerset, Chris Taylor’s “The Next Search Frontier: Just Ask Your Question“. I often have difficulty locating information on the Forbes’ Web site. Sometimes I grow frustrated with the pop up ads and page latency, so snag this article quickly.)
The key point in the article for me was this statement:
Powerset’s main asset is a partnership with PARC, the Palo Alto research center that incubated the computer mouse and the laser printer. In 2005, Pell discovered that PARC researchers had been working for 30 years on turning English into software code. Pell promptly licensed PARC’s research and hired the top scientists in the field, starting with Powerset co-founder Lorenzo Thione.
Xerox PARC (now simply PARC — it’s officially a subsidiary company of Xerox) has been an innovator for many years. But my experience has been that some of its better ideas are difficult to commercialize and convert into major revenue winners. Inxight Software, a PARC spin out, gained some market success and was acquired by Business Objects, which in turn was acquired by SAP. Powerset’s tie up with PARC will be another opportunity to convert ideas into revenue.
You can test drive Powerset here. Information about PARC is here.
I am accustomed to formulating queries with Boolean ANDs and NOTs. Typing questions is too much work for me. With the average query creeping up to 2.3 words on major public search engines, the idea that a well formed question will revolutionize search seems unlikely.
Natural language processing, like semantic and linguistics mechanisms, may be best suited for work behind the scenes, not in front of the user.
Stephen Arnold, June 19, 2008
Clarabridge Version 3.0 Now Available
June 19, 2008
Clarabridge has released Version 3.0 of its text mining platform. The company–based in Reston, Virginia–provides text analytic solutions to industry and the government.
Business analytics has been difficult for average managers to use. Many traditional sytems require that a specialist formulate a query for the business intelligence system. The manager then receives a report. If the report does not answer the question, then the time-consuming intermediated process is repeated. Not surprisingly, some managers prefer to obtain information other ways.
The new version of Clarabridge’s system boasts a drag-and-drop Web interface which the company labels Navigator. You can obtain more information about the system and Navigator here.
Now managers with access to tools usable wihout an intermediary need to recall enough collage math to know what the functions do and trust that the data analyzed meet statistical tests of goodness.
Stephen Arnold, June 18, 2008
Google’s Udi Manber on Search Quality
June 18, 2008
The Googlers were out in force, chipper and explaining, to the 150 or so attendees of the Gilbane Group’s annual content management conference.
The key reason that drives Google forward, asserted Dr. Manber, is that users have rising expectations. Google, therefore, must use smart software, innovate, and scale. In 2007, Google tweaked its PageRank algorithm more than 450 times. Google works to keep bureaucracy at a minimum, empowering engineers to make necessary changes.
PageRank changes are not based on hunches. Extensive data analysis underlies tweaks.
The 21st century, asserted Dr. Manber, is about understanding people; that is, social interactions. Starting points for analysis are user intent. Queries are diverse like “hairstyles for ears that stick out” or “i’m going to win the lottery”.
Like other search systems, Google looks terms up in its index. Then Google uses other functions in order to determine intent; for example, time, place, context, and user information from “individualized Google,” if available.
You can see this in action. Run the queries “GM cars” then “GM food”. Google returns different results for each query even though the acronym GM appears in each query.
User expectations are now growing quickly. Google, therefore, must innovate and continue to scale.
Some development features were referenced, but these were not active in “regular” Google when I ran these sample queries. The presentation was well received and triggered a flurry of questions about site search and universal or federated search. Attendees applauded enthusiastically. The Googley magic was working today.
Stephen Arnold, June 18, 2008
The LinkedIn Bet: $1 Billion Social Valuation
June 18, 2008
The chatter about the Linked In valuation of $1 billion is choking my trusty RSS readers. The voice that reached me was Om Malik’s comments here. The essay is “Is LinkedIn worth $1 Billion.” Mr. Malik makes two points that warrant highlighting in the midst of the cacophony:
- The notion that smart money has picked a winner may be suspect.
- The per subscriber valuation is generous.
Mr. Malik nails this financial optimism as out of step with the company’s performance.
There are three other factors that Mr. Malik’s must-read essay surfaced in my mind:
- Social networks can be gamed. My experience with Linked In suggests that the controls on abuse are not as fine-grained as they should be
- The layers of fees are annoying to me, and I suspect that others will find that invitations often carry along obligations I don’t want
- In a deteriorating economy, referrals are indeed important. However, LinkedIn often wobbles into probes for intelligence in the form of questions from people whom I don’t know and marketing in the form of thinly disguised marketing pitches.
These three factors when combined with Mr. Malik’s analysis suggest an optimistic valuation. “Social” is hot. I am not convinced that today’s flag carriers will be tomorrow’s winners.
Stephen Arnold, June 17, 2008
Business Intelligence: Turmoil and Change Loom
June 18, 2008
Fern Halper, a member of Hurwitz & Associates team, wrote “Text Analytics and the Predictive Enterprise” on June 13, 2008. The story appeared on IT Analyses, and I just saw it.
Ms. Halper makes two point about text analysis. She is talking about analytics vendor SPSS, but her comments apply across the business intelligence spectrum.
First, she makes it clear that text contributes to business intelligence. Structured data and text yield useful insights. The idea is that mining both is more meaningful.
Second, she asserts that analysis of Web logs and other social information can add value to traditional business intelligence activities.
SPSS, SAS Institute, Business Objects (now part of SAP), Clarabridge, and other vendors share somewhat similar views.
My hunch is that market friction is going to become more evident as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle increase their analytics efforts. Business intelligence, like search, is moving downmarket and to some extent becoming a utility functions.
My research into frustration with enterprise search shined a light into a formerly dark corner of an increasingly important function. Business intelligence also has annoyed users with its complexity, hard-to-understand reports, and lack of “average manager” interfaces.
What’s this mean?
My thought is that head-to-head competition will increase. Business intelligence vendors will find themselves pressured to keep their clients from drifting toward analytics solutions bundled with other enterprise applications from the likes of IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. In addition, traditional business intelligence vendors have to figure out how to keep newcomers like Attensity (deep extraction) and Aster Data (data management) from making sales in organizations where there once was a traditional business intelligence monopoly.
For many years, competition among the SAS Institute and SPSS was governed by the type of rules that once governed duels with pistols. Business Objects brought more Madison Avenue sizzle to business intelligence. Now lines are blurring between high-end, specialist business intelligence and what I call “baked in BI” from IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. Add to this the upstarts arriving with zippier technology and a hunger for making sales. The result is an uptick in competitiveness.
Companies today need to find ways to keep customers and squeeze meaning from available data. Search on its own does not deliver what an organization needs. Crunching numbers does not deliver. Text analytics does not deliver. Organizations need all three functions to be available and usable by the average manager.
With this problem getting more attention, a hybrid solution is needed. With a lucrative pay off for the company that cracks this problem, accelerating change is not just likely, significant disruption awaits us in business intelligence. Who could profit from this increased turmoil? I think Google may be a factor going forward. Hosted crunching, customers wanting ease of use, canned analytics and APIs, and social data–are ingredients for a new enterprise recipe from the GOOG?
Stephen Arnold, June 17, 2008
Tag Clouds for the Enterprise
June 18, 2008
One of the Web 2.0 functions that cause Enterprise 2.0 champions’ adrenaline to surge is tag clouds. Digital Inspiration has an excellent essay about these here. The examples are worth the visit. The most useful information in the Web log post is the link to Wordle. You will discover that Wordle is not designed for industrial-strength tag cloud generation. You may find these tools more useful:
- Luke, Lucene Index Toolbox, which is useful for Lucene and Lucene-based systems
- A PHP script from Lots of Code.
Tag clouds and other text processing visualizations are available in a number of commercial text processing systems, including Attensity‘s and Megaputer‘s products.
Stephen Arnold, June 18, 2008
Gilbane Chats Up a Silly Goose: The Arnold Interview
June 18, 2008
On Wednesday, June 18, 2008, I will be interviewed in front of an audience completely unaware of why a fellow from Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, is sitting on a stage answering questions. No one is more baffled than I. Based on my knowledge of the big city, I anticipate confusion, torpor, and indifference to my comments.
In this essay, which will become available on June 18, 2008, the curious will have a reference document that summarizes my thoughts on issues about which I may be asked. There has been no dry run for this interview. The last one in which I participated–the Associated Press’s invitation-only gathering last year–left the audience with little appetite for food. Some found the beverage table a more welcome destination.
Anticipated Question 1: What’s “beyond search” mean?
In research conducted by me and others, about two-thirds of the users of an enterprise search system are dissatisfied with that system. “Beyond search” implies that we have to move to another approach because what is now available in organizations with which I and the other researchers have investigated is not well liked. Due to the cost of some systems, annoying two-thirds of the users is tantamount to getting a D or an F on a report card.
Anticipated Question 2: What’s “behind the firewall search” mean?
I wrote about the search elephant here. Many different functions involving information access are made available to an employee, contractor, or authorized user. The idea is that “behind the firewall search” is not public and made available by an organization to a select group of users. The “search elephant” refers to the many different ways in which search is understood and perceived within an organization.
Anticipated Question 3: Why are there so many search vendors and more coming each day?
There is a belief that existing systems are not tapping into what I have estimated to be a $2.5 billion market for information access in the enterprise. Entrepreneurs and people with money look at Google and think, “We should be able to make gains like that in the enterprise market.” I also think that the market itself is trying to figure out the search elephant. Buyers don’t know what is needed. When entrepreneurs, money, and confused customers with severe information access problems come together, we have the type of market place that exists today.
Anticipated Question 4: What about Microsoft and Fast Search & Transfer?
I understand that it is business as usual at Microsoft and Fast Search. For Microsoft, this means trying to get 10,000 motorboats to go in roughly the same direction. For Fast Search, the company continues to license its Enterprise Search Platform and service customers. There are many bits of grit in the working parts where Microsoft and Fast Search mesh. It is too soon to tell if these inhibitors are trivial or whether the machine will sputter, maybe stop. What I tell people is to ignore the Microsoft-Fast Search tie up, and get a solution for a SharePoint environment that works. There are good choices ranging from a lower cost solution like dtSearch to a competitively priced system from Coveo, Exalead, ISYS Search Software, or another Microsoft Certified vendor.
Anticipated Question 5: What’s the impact of the Google Search Appliance?
Many vendors will tell you that Google has delivered a second-class system. That’s not exactly true. With the OneBox API, Google has a very solid solution. The impact is that Google has about 10,000 enterprise customers. These are sales made, in many cases, under the noses of incumbent vendors. Google’s a player in the enterprise market and a serious one. I have uncovered one impactful bit of research at Google that could–note, I said, could–change the search landscape. I have tried to ask Google about this development, but the GOOG thinks I am do not merit their attention. Too bad for me, I guess.
Anticipated Question 6: What’s the impact of text processing, semantic search, and other new technologies on enterprise search?
These are hot terms that will open doors. Some vendors will make sales because of their ability to mesh trendy concepts with more traditional search.
Stephen Arnold, June 18, 2008
Dialog Information Services: Can a New Owner Revive a Former Online Giant
June 17, 2008
A flurry of voice mail greeted me when I landed in San Francisco a short time ago. Thomson Reuters, according to the folks feeding me rumors, is looking to sell Dialog Information Services. Dialog was once the Google of online. Just long ago, of course. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, online dirt paths ran through Dialog Information Services, once a crown jewel of Lockheed Martin.
Dialog hosted commercial databases, charged users for access, and shared the money with the specialists who created such files as ABI / INFORM (business information) and Investext (analyst reports). The customers were not average folks. The users were trained information professionals who mastered the syntax of the naked Dialog command line. When I used Dialog, I paid to get a password. I paid to connect to a dial up network. I paid to see a bibliographic record. I paid to see an abstract. I paid to print out on thermal paper my search results. After getting a Dialog bill, it was easy for me to make the jump to Internet research. I did not get whacked $1 an abstract or more when I wanted to research a topic. I have had Dialog bills for a single research session that hit $300 in 1980 dollars.
Thomson Reuters is run by financial wizards with sharp pencils. Selling this property makes sense. I am not the only person addicted to research who found the online charges motivation to find an alternative like the Internet and Google Scholar.
Commercial online services have been hard hit in recent years by a double-whammy.
First, the core market of trained information professionals have watched their budgets squeezed. The for-fee services, therefore, have to fight to keep their numbers up.
Second, the Internet has become the first stop for many people looking for information, including me. I no longer use for fee services. The most timely information is available elsewhere, and I think that a specialized service for a user community used to looking for information on no charge Internet sites suggests an even more difficult future.
Potential Buyers
Who will be sufficiently bold to buy Dialog for several hundred million dollars, maybe more? Here are a few possibilities:
- Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. This company has been gobbling up good properties and questionable information companies for several years. More debt should make life exciting if CSA is the buyer
- Ebsco Electronic Publishing. This is a unit of the privately held EB Stevens Company. I heard that Ebsco just inked a deal with Endeca to breathe life into Ebsco’s own online service. Ebsco Electronic Publishing has a parent with deep pockets, and it is possible that buying Dialog delivers more reach.
- An investment bank. Buyout masters see gold where others, like me, see dust bunnies. Dialog will be tough to spiff up and resell.
- LexisNexis. This online legal service has not had an easy time with non-law content since it lost its exclusive for the New York Times. Parent Reed Elsevier will have to be reading tea leaves to find a way to make this combination work technically and financially. If LexisNexis is the buyer, I think the management team may know something about traditional online I’m missing.
My hunch is that Bethesda-based Cambridge Scientific Abstracts will make the leap.
The rumor, of course, may be false. But let’s look at the upside and downside of buying an online company with its roots the mainframe world.
Upside
Dialog, along with LexisNexis and Westlaw (also a Thomson Reuters property), has a good customer base among Fortune 500 companies. Also, Dialog has more than 500 commercial databases online and ready to go.
Downside
I think the big issue is the cost of operating this traditional business. Add to that the lack of enthusiasm youthful online searcher have for for-fee services and you have a growth problem.
When I get more substantive information, I will pass it along.
Stephen Arnold, June 17, 2008
Update 1, June 17, 2008 9 am Eastern
A reader who wishes to remain anonymous reminded me of these points:
- Dialog has more content than any other service.
- Dialog’s interface could learn from Ovid. He writes: “[What is needed is an] OvidSP-type interface to all Dialog databases. You can see how that looks by clicking on “Journal Articles Buy Now” on www.ovid.com, then on “Main Search Page” on the top toolbar. This pay-per-full-text-view interface for the medical field is a large subset of the complete commercial product.
Let me offer some comments about these useful remarks.
First, Dialog has content. One issue that challenges the present owner and the to-be owner if there is one with sufficient appetite for risk is scale. Dialog’s content would be more useful if it were possible to query, analyze, and report across the data. Let me give you one example. At this time, it is difficult for me to manipulate the Investext reports. I have to download chunks and then assemble them. If I want to look for relationship, I have to download other results and then process the data in a separate application on my own system. No problem for me, but this is a challenge for others. Can Dialog do a “dataspace” query? Nope, not unless the buyer is Google or one of the data management companies with the technology and the ability to scale a commercial service. I agree that Dialog has terabytes of data, but in its historical form, those data are increasingly valueless to me. Making Dialog into a golden goose is out of reach for most of the online companies with which I am familiar. I hope I am surprised that Dialog’s terabytes of individual datum atoms become useful information. My hunch is that the cost and technical complexity of as-is Dialog will make progress slow, expensive, and difficult.
With regards to the interface, I agree. Online services have not been particularly good with interface and user experience. Ovid is better than some, but not as good as some of the more innovative systems that I have seen and in one case profiled in my Silobreaker.com write ups in this Web log which you can locate using the Web log search box on the Beyond Search splash page. The reason commercial interfaces to for-fee content are lousy are not so good boils down to two factors: [a] the money comes from experienced or expert users, so the interfaces are overly complex. The Google approach is ignored in favor of too many choices, options, and features. [b] The decision making process at for-fee information companies are hamstrung by their legacy systems, contracts that limit what can and cannot be done with content, and awareness of the outside world. Like traditional publishing, for-fee database operations find themselves isolated. Remember, in the pre-Web world, these outfits were in the driver’s seat. Now most are waiting for the bus to come pick them up.
End update 1
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