Microsoft and Search in a Time Warp
November 2, 2008
In grade school in Illinois, I recall learning the meaning of the word anachronistic. For some reason, the explanation has stuck with me for more than 55 years. The teacher, Miss Chessman, told the class, “Ancient Greeks did not have an alarm clock.” The idea is that if you mix up when things occur, you run the risk of creating the equivalent of a dog’s breakfast.
My newsreader delivered CIO Magazine’s “Search Will Outshine KM” by Mike Altendorf to read. I don’t know Mr. Altendorf, and I have to admit that I disagree with a couple of the points he makes in this two part article, which you can read here. I am a tired goose, and I don’t want to trigger a squabble in the barn yard. I do want to point out where Mr. Altendorf and I part company.
First, the notion of search outshining KM is not something I have thought much about. KM is mostly baloney, one of those “trends” that promise much and deliver little that one can measure. When I watch intelligent people leaving one company for another, no software system captures what that person knows. IBM is trying to prevent a chip designer from leaving Big Blue to join Apple. If KM worked, IBM wouldn’t take such extreme action to prevent a person from changing jobs. That’s KM for you. It doesn’t deliver. And search? It is, in general, not too helpful either. In fact, search is one of the few software systems to engender a dissatisfaction rate among its users of 60 to 70 percent. In my opinion, search outshining KM is a silly assertion, and one that makes it seem that one lousy system can deliver information better than another lousy system. Both search and KM work best when applied to specific problems and bounded by realistic expectations and budgets.
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Second, the reference to Microsoft’s acquisition of Fast Search and Transfer and Powerset is startling. First, Mr. Altendorf makes no reference to the police action in Oslo that threatens to undermine the credibility of the Fast Search technology, finances, and executives. Second, Powerset is not complement to Fast Search technology for two reasons: [a] Powerset technology is part of the Live.com service and has not to my knowledge been hooked to the Fast Search system at this time and [b] notion that Microsoft can “tie together” disparate technologies is out of touch with reality. Let me be clear. Microsoft has compatibility issues within its own product families; specifically, SharePoint and the Dynamics range of software. When you toss in the Fast Search conglomeration of original code, the bits of open source Fast Search has used in its system, and the technology from the acquisitions Fast Search made prior to its purchase by Microsoft, you have quite a bit of integrating to do. Now add the Powerset original code with the licensed technology from Xerox Parc, and you have even more work. Microsoft’s units can’t make the ribbon interface consistent across Outlook, Word, and Visio in Office 2007. Mr. Altendorf’s blithely reassures me that Microsoft can work out these incongruities. I beg to differ.
Finally, the references to Google miss the fact that Google is disrupting Microsoft. Without Google’s math club behavior and its slow, uneven success in the enterprise, Microsoft would not have paid $1.2 billion for the Fast Search basket of technical herring nor would it have purchased the Powerset semantic technology. I don’t think Mr. Altendorf has put the role of Google in its proper perspective. Cheap PCs are an important trend, but these gizmos have had little influence on the trajectory of Microsoft in the enterprise.
I am not sure what to make of Mr. Altendorf’s analysis. On the surface, it seems reasonable. After thinking about the information presented, I think Mr. Altendorf has misplaced confidence in Microsoft and has hopped right over the reality of Microsoft’s buying a company that is alleged to have taken some short cuts in enterprise search and acquiring semantic technology that may be difficult, if not impossible, to scale. What gives Mr. Altendorf so much confidence in Microsoft’s ability to make its many moving parts work together harmoniously?
Am I off base here? Mr. Altendorf seems to have time out of joint, writing as if certain events did not occur or as if those events are taken from some happier time when Microsoft gets its interfaces consistent, its products to work together, and when the police are not sifting through three years of Fast Search & Transfer’s emails, documents, and files. Perhaps anachronism is the incorrect word. Maybe fiction is more appropriate?
Stephen Arnold, November 2, 2008
Comments
2 Responses to “Microsoft and Search in a Time Warp”
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> Mr. Altendorf’s blithely reassures me that Microsoft can work out these
> incongruities. I beg to differ.
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Score = Arnold 1
Altendorf = 0
“incongruities” that is some understatement
David Eddy
Thanks for posting.
Stephen Arnold, November 4, 2008