Arnold Comments about Exalead’s Advanced Technologies
November 19, 2008
In November 2008, I was invited to a technical briefing by Exalead. In the two hour session, I met several of Exalead’s engineers and had an opportunity to play with a number of Exalead “lab” projects. These “lab” projects are similar to the demonstrations that one can find on many vendors’ Web sites or trade show exhibits. After my briefing, an Exalead engineer asked me if I would allow the company to video my comments and impressions of the new Exalead technology. After a free lunch, I was an easy target. The brief video of my impromptu comments is now online and publicly viewable. You can see it here.
Stephen Arnold, November 19, 2008
Hewlett Packard: 4th Quarter Friskiness
November 19, 2008
Hewlett Packard reported that its fourth quarter looked pretty good. You can read the November 18, 2008, report here. This San Francisco Business Times story mixed some bitter with the sweet with the headline “HP Extends Holiday Shutdown but Offers Upbeat Earnings Report.” The shutdown allows employees to be with their families and it also conserves cash, which for many companies is scarce. One source close to HP activities told me that Exalead, the French information infrastructure and content processing company, has signed a deal for Exalead to become the first information access vendor to join the HP Business Intelligence Partner Program. This is an HP initiative to deal with terascale information access implementations. HP bought Exstream Software for $1.0 billion earlier in 2008 and now the company is pushing into the business intelligence market. As more information becomes available about Exalead’s role in business intelligence with HP, I will try to document the trajectory of this deal. Exalead’s business intelligence demo that I saw in Paris was quite impressive.
Stephen Arnold, November 18, 2008
More on SharePoint in the Cloud
November 18, 2008
Mary-Joe Foley, author of Microsoft 2.0, wrote “What Does SharePoint in the Cloud Mean?” This is a good Web log post. For me the most important part of the write up is the table that shows what SharePoint in the cloud will deliver. To summarize her post is easy. I would just say, “Not much.” Ms. Foley wrote:
For some users, this stripped-down feature set is no doubt worth the cost savings. Others — who aren’t ready to entrust Microsoft (or any cloud vendor, for that matter) with their data — or who need all the functionality in Exchange, SharePoint, etc., will stick with the software-only versions of these products.
Everyone is quite gentle when talking about SharePoint. Microsoft is a big company and it can be vindictive I suppose. At some point, the SharePoint craze may wane and reality set in. I am not sure when customers will realize that hosted SharePoint delivers only a few functions. On premises SharePoint delivers a steady flow of certified engineers.
Stephen Arnold, November 19, 2008
Microsoft: Pricing Hardball
November 18, 2008
I think I cut economics the day low ball pricing was discussed. Even though I have worked as a consultant since my days at Halliburton NUS, I bill by the hour or the project. When I read “Microsoft Offers Dynamics ERP and CRM Users 0% Finance” here, I was a puzzled. The idea of a low price is one thing, but a low price plus zero percent financing means “free” to me. The news item in Manufacturing Computer Solutions said:
The deal is apparently available to new, qualifying customers on Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM solutions costing from $20,000 up to $1 million, and is spread over 36 months.
My hunch is that more pricing deals will be forthcoming as Microsoft seeks to exploit the structural weaknesses of Oracle and SAP, both recently downgraded by Merrill Lynch. What does this announcement mean to me? I think Microsoft will be offering similar deals for Microsoft Fast search and content processing systems. Will competitors grouse? Nope, I think competitors will have to respond or find themselves in a race with Microsoft taking the lead. Will Google cut its stratospheric prices for its GB 5005 and other high end devices? The company may have to respond. Free is a compelling proposition to some organizations.
Stephen Arnold, November 18, 2008
Google Monetizes Its Finance Site
November 18, 2008
Google Finance has improved since it appeared two years ago. I like the link to the America Online Relegence service. A reader sent me a link to “Google Begins to Monetize Google Finance… Good or Bad?”. You can read the full text of this story here. The Web log post reports that “the Google Finance site will definitely add much needed revenues to Google, which should help shore up any losses in other divisions hurt by the weak advertising market.” In my opinion, I think Google will monetize more of its services, and I also believe that the company will release some of its “potential energy” to monetize some of its more interesting technology. In my forthcoming Google and Publishing I describe an interesting matching operation that could challenge such online services as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and similar buyer-service provider activities. I don’t think advertising alone can slake Google’s need for revenue. The cost structure is inelastic in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, November 18, 2008
Search Security: An Oxymoron
November 18, 2008
ZDNet runs a nifty feature called IT Facts. Every day, the ZD editors and writers post interesting statistics. Now if you have a knack for numbers, you can make those equations sit up, roll over, and play dead. Despite the “flexibility” of statistical methods, I found “42% of Organizations Reported Unauthorized Access to Their Active Directory.” If you don’t know what an AD or Active Directory is, click here and drink deeply of the information. If you are in a hurry, its a gizmo Microsoft cooked up to make security quick and easy for certified Microsoft engineers to set up. According to Osterman Research, found security loopholes in two fifths of the sample’s servers. Think about third party search systems that “look” at AD and use it to manage user access to search. In my opinion, problems with one percent of the accesses warrants concern on my part. I know folks are rushing to SharePoint, but could Active Directory be this bad? I hope not. My hunch is that anyone with a Microsoft AD will want to do some checking.
Stephen Arnold, November 18, 2008
Autonomy: An Interview with Andrew Kanter
November 18, 2008
Andrew Kanter is the chief operating officer of Autonomy, a vendor of enterprise infrastructure and content processing systems, participated in the Search Wizards Speak series. Mr. Kanter addressed a number of topics in this wide ranging discussing, including the firm’s “meaning based computing” technology and the company’s move into cloud computing and hosted services. Autonomy was founded in 1996, but the company has been at the forefront of advanced content processing for more than a decade. Some analysts peg Autonomy as the world’s largest vendor of search systems in the world. The firm’s system is described as a “pan enterprise search platform” and incorporates technology that handles content automatically via the firm’s intelligent data operating layer or IDOL system.
Mr. Kanter said about the tough financial climate that is burdening some information system vendors:
Autonomy has closed some of the biggest deals in our history in recent months, reaching to $20 million, $70 million and more. These companies themselves often don’t know what’s happening within their own walls until it’s too late. In some ways it’s a sad truth but there is always going to be a demand for this type of [Autonomy] solution, whatever happens to the macroeconomic climate.
Mr. Kanter also talked about Autonomy’s ability to index audio and video content which is proliferating at some organizations. He said:
These days it’s very rare that we have a purely text-centric installation because we naturally communicate as human beings through rich forms of information such as voice and video. Autonomy’s IDOL is at the heart of our Autonomy Virage technology, applying the same conceptual analysis to audio and video content as to text. Further, even if demand today is only for text, most enterprises want to have the capability of including audio and video at a later date. They are bringing into their systems conference calls, webinars and other rich media content. In fact, we are seeing an increase in customers using our Autonomy Virage rich media solutions across all verticals. The strength of the platform approach is enable the architecture to evolve to accommodate the enterprise’s changing needs, without having to rip everything out.
You can read the complete interview with Mr. Kanter on the ArnoldIT.com Web site. Navigate to http://www.arnoldit.com/search-wizards-speak/ or click here to access the interview directly.
Stephen Arnold, November 18, 2008
YouTube Hulu Face Off
November 17, 2008
Tim Bradshaw’s and Matthew Garrahan’s “Riveal Forecast to Catch YouTube” caught my eye on November 16, 2008. I am not too concerned with user-genrated videos, services that cause Viacom to sue Google for $1.0 billion, and information services that force me to acquire data within the limits of a serial data stream. I spoke with a colleague in Europe early this morning (November 17, 2008), and I learned that the Financial Times story here documents what may be Google’s first head-to-head competitive Web service “loss.” Google has suffered set backs with staff quitting, acquisitions that went aground, and deal like the one with Verizon that stalled. My colleague’s point was that Google bought a dominant Web service and failed to monetize it. Then a traditional entertainment company rolled out Hulu and now seems poised to pull the News Corporation into the Hulu “hoop”. YouTube.com, therefore, may be bypassed or just plain defeated by organizations who know about entertainment and just enough about technology to make the service viable. Is my colleague correct? I don’t know because YouTube.com is based on user-provided content. Copyright hassles aside, the YouTube.com content is quite eclectic. I find it difficult to locate certain videos such as Google’s own talks. YouTube.com is starting to move into iTunes’ territory, but I have my doubts that the costs of supporting the user generated video plus feature films can cover Google’s costs. Companies like NBC Universal and News Corporation have not been able to hit Web home runs. The companies understand popular culture and how to exploit a trend. These traditional media companies have an infrastructure in place to sell ads to agencies using lingo the agencies understand. Take a look at the Financial Times’s article. This might be one of those stories that marks a turning point in a particular market sector. If my colleague is correct, the GOOG may be looking at its first big defeat in online services. I am pro-Google but on the fence in this matter. You can monitor the Google YouTube.com blog at www.arnoldit.com/overflight to keep pace with news in this sector.
Stephen Arnold, November 17, 2008
Ad Age Provides Color on Yahoo’s Rudderless Boat
November 17, 2008
The ad biz does not feather this goose’s nest. I received a mobile call today from a person from New York. He was annoyed that I have consigned Yahoo to the dust bin. I listened to the arguments the caller advanced. I recall the points about traffic, brands, and visibility on Madison Avenue. I told the caller, “Great points. Let me do some thinking.”
I poked around and saw a reference to the Ad Age article “Why Yahoo Still Matters for You.” You can read the full text of the story here. The authors were Abbey Klassen and Michael Learmonth. The headline, in my opinion, was misleading. The write up provided me with more evidence about Yahoo’s rudderless boat. Among the points I noted were:
- The company lost an account because it lacked ideas
- Yahoo has potential
- Yahoo has more levers to pull than some of its competitors.
None of these points has enough wood behind them to get me to change my mind. Yahoo has been around about 15 years. I think its lack of ideas is evident in the wacky and ineffective search system. One example today: I wanted a football score. Then on the sports splash page I wanted to find the results of last night’s NASCAR race. The search box beckoned me and returned Web wide results, not results about sports. Guess I am the only person in the world who wants to run a sports related query from Yahoo’s sports portal. Yahoo may have levers, but it needs to get a firm hand on its rudder and steer the boat away from Victoria Falls.
Stephen Arnold, November 17, 2008
Why Dead Tree Publishers Don’t Get the Web
November 17, 2008
I have had some push back about my “dead tree” essays. My position is that most publishers are following the trajectory of Ford and General Motors. I don’t think there is much hope for most of the US auto industry or for most of the traditional publishers. Slate published here a story I found wonderfully refreshing. Lesley M.M. Blume’s “Glossed Over: Why Can’t Magazines Get the Web?” contains a wealth of information. One point that I found particularly telling was:
And if magazine publishers were disinclined to build this infrastructure when they were relatively flush, now all of their dwindling resources are going to shore up their core products, making a meaningful transition online even less likely.
I think this is a key point. Plumbing–that is, infrastructure–is not understood, valued, or hip. Take a look at this excellent write up. You won’t want to sign up for one of those three year subscriptions of your favorite magazine after reading Ms. Blume’s essay.
Stephen Arnold, November 17, 2008
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