Earth to Forrester, Earth to Forrester. The Economic Slowdown Is Here. Copy.
September 20, 2008
Update September 23, 2008: More on the “mild” downturn in the IT world. When Silicon Valley gets the flu, might it be contagious? More information here and here.
[original post]
I just stepped off a fun filled flight from Amsterdam to New York. I fire up my browser and read this headline: “Mild Tech Slowdown Ahead”. The author is the super-guru, mid range consulting firm edition, George F. Colony. You can read his exegesis here. The headline says it clearly. The balance of 2008 and 2009 is headed for a “mild” economic downturn. Technology will be affected. I–as the official addled goose of information access–can’t dispute the lofty thoughts of Forrester. I can add several observations and perhaps my two or three readers I have can add a few observations. You don’t have to agree with me. You are rejoicing in the “mild” slowdown which has little material impact on your technology centric activities.
Which is it in IT? Happy face or sad face. I vote for sad.
My observations:
- Information technology is in crisis. Major projects are not delivering. Users–up to two thirds of those struggling with search and content processing–are dissatisfied with those systems. The issues are noticeable in the desultory attitudes of trade show attendees (at least the trade shows I attend) and the “we can do anything” pitch of the vendors. There’s a problem, Houston, and “mild” doesn’t capture the situation.
- I took a quick look at an analysis of eDiscovery firms in a late 2006 report. Of the 48 vendors mentions substantive changes in the material circumstances of 26 firms indicate that in this one sector there are too many hungry chiefs and not enough to eat. The same revenue starvation is evident in business intelligence, enterprise search, and even that BurgerKing Whopper of fuzziness–content management. The downturn began in 2007 and is now accelerating. If the trend continues, 2009 will find the chiefs killing and consuming one another. Charles Darwin in action. “Mild” is not the word I choose for the tension building among small and large vendors alike.
- The information technology budgets are in shambles. A Fortune 500 has solved the inflationary systems and software costs in a very simple way–budget caps. No matter what happens, the IT folks have a finite amount of money. The same bean counter approach may be found at US national laboratories, Federal agencies, start ups without significant revenue, and big companies. There’s not enough pay off from many of the zippy new investments to make venture sharks and terrified fund managers to throw money into systems and services that don’t pay off.
Maybe my view of the information technology world is skewed. I get asked to comment on how to fix such excesses as organizations that own multiple search systems that don’t work or play well with one another, by financial outfits trying to figure out how certain companies report record revenues without a concomitant payoff to the bottomline, and innovative companies who can’t figure out how to close a deal and get the client to pay on time because the system doesn’t meet user needs.
When this “mild” downturn is put in the context of the broader economic challenges in the US and now elsewhere, I see some rough seas ahead. Actually that’s not a good metaphor. I see a category 5 hurricane building. It’s heading right at information technology implementations that fail. It’s going to hit the vendors who promise anything and then deliver disappointments. It will strike directly at companies who deploy yesterday’s bread as today’s freshly baked donut.
This is a Siebel smart probe. Do you want to deploy this on your watch or dial in to one of the new cloud based options? I am leaning to the cloud based solutions. On premises’ installations are too tough to manage and keep on a reasonable management track. What’s your experience?
The interest in cloud based applications is growing. One reason is that cost control may be easier. Another is that if a cloud solution works, an organization can trim some fat from its IT budget: people, licenses, consultants, and hardware. Five years ago geospatial meant on premises and expensive solutions; today, think Google. Five years ago CRM meant PeopleSoft and Siebel; today, think Salesforce.com. Other sectors are gaining steam because the old IT model is not right for the challenges that face companies now and tomorrow.
What’s your experience? Vindaloo or no spice in the IT, information access, and content processing world? Help me learn. Share your data, please.
Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2008
Search: Moving Up the Buzzword Chain of Being
September 20, 2008
In one of my university required courses, the professor revealed the secrets of “the great chain of being”. After 45 years, my recollection of Dr. Pearce’s lecture are fuzzy, but I recall at the top of the chain was God, then angels, and then a pecking order of creatures. Down at the bottom were paramecia like me.
Search terminology works like this I concluded after giving my talk at Erik Hartmann’s conference in Utrecht. I prepared for my remarks by talking with a dozen vendors exhibiting at the conference. I also listened to various presenters for five to 15 minutes. I had to limit my listening in order to get a representative sampling of the topics and interests of the conference attendees.
What I concluded was:
- People perceive Google as a Web search company that sells ads. In this biased sample, I noted a discomfort about Google’s growing dominance of digital information. I did not hear any one criticize Google, but I sensed a growing concern about privacy, scope, traffic, etc. I remain excited about Google and probably come across as a Google cheerleader, which annoyed some of the people with whom I spoke.
- Vendors and consultants who once hawked content management, records management, and enterprise search have changed their tune. Instead of talking about CMS, EDM, and other smart sounding acronyms, the vendors are pulling terminology out of MBA lexicons. (More about this in a moment.)
- The people listening to these talks, including mine, hunger–even plead–for solutions to challenges arising from their inability to find needed information, manage terabytes of digital “stuff” in their offices, and create a solution that does not require constant spoon feeding.
The result is that “old” solutions and half baked solutions are wrapped in new terminology taken from a higher level in the “great chain of buzzwords”. Here’s an example: instead of saying “enterprise search” or “behind the firewall search”, some vendors talked about “information access” and “findability” whatever that means. The lesser word is search, which most people seemed to agree was uninteresting, which is a code word for “does not work”. The words “information access” come from a loftier position on the buzzword “great chain of being”. The vendors are sounding more like McKinsey and Booz, Allen known nothings than subject matter experts.
A representation of the Great Chain of Being. Image source: http://www.kheper.net/topics/greatchainofbeing/Steps.gif
Consider this example: “business process management”. This is definitely a buzzword from a loftier position on the buzzword “great chain of being”. “BPM” is in the Heaven category, not Stone or Flame category. But I don’t know what BPM means. I think the folks using this word want to avoid precise definitions because that limits their freedom. Implying that “BPM” will solve a problem is easier than actually diagnosing the problem and solving it. “BPM” was the acronym of the conference. Presenters from publishers, consultancies, and vendors inserting this three letter token for what seemed like a pretty basic notion; that is, the steps needed to complete a task. Since search and content management are losers in the revenue generating department, folks engaged in these activities now talk about BPM. Old wine, new bottles but the labels have buzzwords from higher in the “great chain of being”.
Easy Ask and Progress Software’s Declining Earnings
September 20, 2008
Easy Ask is a search system owned by Progress Software. Like Endeca and Mercado, Easy Ask delivers a system that can make an e-commerce site generate more revenue. But Easy Ask, like other search companies gobbled by larger firms, has to fight for respect in a contentious, volatile world. You can get more information about Easy Ask e-commerce system here.
The company has been enhancing the product. The full name is Progress EasyAsk, but my spelling checker balks at the squishing of two words together. The product has been sent to the gym and fed protein milk shakes. Its beefier functionalities are described by the company this way:
Progress Easy Ask for Operational Business Intelligence (BI) fills the gap between search and BI systems to allow executives, analysts, business managers, and professional staff to access the information they need to improve business operations.
Progress released its third quarter results, and you can scan Forbes’ take on the report card here, and the news was not bad but not good either. Progess’ revenue slipped, down from $127 million in Q3 2007 to $123 million in Q3 2008. Progress has been diversifying and leveraging its acquisitions, but if this trend continues, I wonder if Easy Ask will get the financial injections to which search and content processing companies are addicted. If not, Easy Ask may face a tough 2009.
Can Progress get its revenue back on track? I think it will take significant management work. Progress has to justify its products’ value when clients are looking at low cost tools from other vendors, open source, Microsoft’s array of servers. Dot Net, and programming tools, and brutal competition in search.
It’s too early to sound a stronger warning about Progress, but the company’s results for the next 12 weeks will be interesting to review when those data become available.
Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2008
SharePoint Positives
September 20, 2008
Software Development Times published on September 15, 2008, “SharePoint Scores with Developers” here. The writer, David Worthington, provides an excellent summary of the case for SharePoint. The explanation of SharePoint benefits may be a better presentation than Microsoft’s own sales collateral. One point that caught my attention was this statement:
“Microsoft has run QA over it, and the CRUD [create, read, update and delete] operations are built into the quality life cycle. There are standard data access operations against SharePoint lists; you don’t have to spend nearly as much time testing.”
Rapid application development is important in many information department activities. Eliminating testing, in my experience, may have some downsides. Because of the differences that exist within Microsoft’s own products, time savings in one place may result in an unexpected time cost in another. Tailoring search in SharePoint can be a particularly tricky job. Agree? Disagree?
Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2008
Google: Unchrome Chrome’s Tracking Functions
September 20, 2008
Silicon.com has a useful article “Google Browser’s Tracking Feature Alarms Developers, Privacy Advocates” about Google Chrome. The writer Elise Ackerman references the browser’s “phoning home” feature. But the most important item in the write up is the unearthing of a piece of software that can be used, she asserts, to blunt some of Google’s usage tracking functions. She writes:
I firmly believe that it is better to have control over your own privacy without having to trust that Google doesn’t do anything bad with your data,” said Sven Abels, president of Abelssoft, a software company in Delmenhorst, Germany, that is offering free downloads of its UnChrome software.
This download link worked for me at 5 18 am Utrecht on September 20, 2008. I have not tested this script, so use it at your own risk. More information about Google’s tracking, ad injection technology, and usage data models appear in various Google technical papers and documents available from the USPTO. I included a description of some of the Google methods in my 2005 study The Google Legacy, which is still available from the publisher here. Usage tracking is a bit of old news given new life because of Google’s Chrome release. Chrome, as I noted in my speech on Thursday afternoon at the Hartmann Conference, is perceived as a browser. In my opinion it is an umbilical that connects any computing device to the Google data centers. The computing device and its operating system are little more than booster rockets that get the user into Google orbit.
Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2008
HP Gets Googley
September 20, 2008
The story in InfoWorld “HP Applies Google Model to New Storage System” marks a turning point in vendors of expensive, brand name iron. You can read the story by Mikael Ricknas here. For me the most important point in the article was:
Hewlett-Packard’s ExDS storage system is an online content repository that will cost less than $2 per gigabyte or $2,000 per terabyte.
HP sells significant amounts of hardware to Microsoft. At this bargain basement price, HP must think it can make money on what may be knife edge margins. As important, Hewlett Packard appears to be emulating Google’s approach to storage. Google’s technical papers reveal significant details about its storage methods five years ago. If you read between the lines, Google references its storage techniques in its discussion of other Google innovations.
The HP technology could assist Microsoft and other companies wrestling with storage. I wonder if Google has improved its storage methods in the same 60 month interval. Catching up to where Google was won’t provide a substantive payoff over the long term.
Can HP innovate to leap frog Google? Let me know your thoughts?
Stephen Arnold, September 19, 2008
Google: Limits of the Googley Technical Management Model
September 19, 2008
You can read the statement by the former Digital Equipment wizard and now Google senior vice president of engineering and research Alan Eustace here. The article “Changes in Phoenix” announces the closing of the Google office in Phoenix. The office opened several years ago, and you can refresh your memory about the promise of this new engineering facility here. The statement is clear and gentle. For me the most important statement in the article was:
But we’ve found that despite everyone’s best efforts, the projects our engineers have been working on in Arizona have been, and remain, highly fragmented. So after a lot of soul searching we have decided to incorporate work on these projects into teams elsewhere at Google. We will therefore be closing our Arizona office on November 21, 2008.
My take on this is that Phoenix may be an anomaly. Maybe it was the weather? Maybe it was water or lack of it? With this office closing, I asked myself, “Has the Googley management method reached its sustainable limit?” With one office closing, I just have a question. I need more data. A single instance. Nothing more. But what if…
Stephen Arnold, September 19, 2008
London’s Google Developer Day Summary
September 19, 2008
A happy quack to Tim Anderson for his excellent summary of the key points from Google’s London Developer Day. You can read his summary here. His “Google Developer Day Promotes Web as a Platform” hits the highlights and adds some color. Mr. Anderson adds useful comments like this as well:
There were signs Google is engaged in a platform war, between what it calls the ‘open web’ and proprietary web-development software, such as Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight.
I wish more ZDNet Web log posts were like this one.
Stephen Arnold, September 19, 2008
Autonomy: Quicker than Microsoft Fast Search Yet Again
September 19, 2008
Autonomy continues to out think Microsoft Fast Search. The nimbleness of Autonomy cannot be overlooked by the Redmond giant. Microsoft has revenues of $65 billion or so. Autonomy weighs in with $400 million or $500 million in revenues. Microsoft spent $1.2 billion for an enterprise search vendor which stunned the content processing world with a Web part to integrate SharePoint (a hugely complex content management system) with Fast ESP (an equally complex content processing system). Now Autonomy rolls out its “its information processing technology [that] extends Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) to meet customer requirements for scalability, connectivity and conceptual search.” You can read the details of this new Autonomy product here.
Now if I were involved with Microsoft Fast Search, I would be tempted to say, “Those Autonomy folks have hit on a very good idea.” I might even be tempted to suggest that we buy Autonomy just to get the company’s marketing team. When you have billions in the bank and are fighting to out Google Google, why not buy Autonomy? It makes more sense than trying to weld together Powerset and Ciao.com technology in my opinion.
I don’t know who is running the Microsoft enterprise search operation. There’s been too many executive changes and too few substantive announcements to hold this addled goose’s short attention span. What’s clear is that Autonomy is able to pinpoint cracks in the Microsoft Fast Search armor and exploit them. Anyone who has any hands on experience with SharePoint knows that it’s easy to get a finger crushed in SharePoint’s moving parts. So Autonomy asserts:
Autonomy further extends global MOSS scalability through its distributed, brokered architecture and “geo-efficient” design which allows data to be automatically replicated in the most sensible location based on bandwidth, lag time, availability and demand. This enables high performance and gives users aggregated access to all enterprise information in a unified view in globally dispersed environments while reducing bandwidth overhead. Because IDOL creates a stub, or shortcut, to the data and supports tiered storage rather than requiring that data be stored in SQL Server, organizations using IDOL with SharePoint can further benefit from dramatically reduced SQL Server licenses and associated scalability limitations.
Microsoft may want to pay close attention to how Autonomy deftly points out the finger mashing gears and levers in SharePoint. Next Microsoft may want to put safety covers on the more dangerous bits. If SharePoint and Fast Search continue to dog paddle along, Autonomy and maybe other vendors will find the 100 million SharePoint users easy pickings.
A happy quack to Autonomy for this deft marketing move. A goose gift for the Redmond behemoth who seems unable to organize its parade and get it marching toward the objective of delivering a solution to the scaling problems in SharePoint. Agree? Disagree? Help keep me informed via the Comments function on this Web log.
Stephen Arnold, September 19, 2008
Google and Government Content
September 19, 2008
In the furor over Google’s growing share of the search market and the GOOG’s decision to move forward with its Yahoo ad deal, I can’t fault anyone for overlooking this Federal Computer Week article. “The Search Mandate” by FCW’s John S. Monroe is a brief but important comment about Google. You can read the September 15, 2008, item here. Google, according to Mr. Monroe, does a better job of indexing US government information than the US government. For those unaware of the Government Information Locator Service or GILS, this 1994 initiative was supposed to market it easy to find US government information. The National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) is killing the program. The reason is that Google and other commercial search engines do a better job than the US government. For most people, the idea that a service like Google’s government search here or the Microsoft-Vivisimo service here or even the little known Yahoo service available by limiting the query to the Dot Gov domain here are better than the Federal government’s home grown GILS is obvious.
For me, this announcement triggered several thoughts. I want to outline these so I don’t have them slip away, and you may want to comment on my opinion about this GILS dead end.
- The scope of the Google government index, based on my test queries, seems broader than the indexes of either Yahoo or Microsoft-Vivisimo. Even queries run on the Department of Energy Web site, indexed by a third party engine, perform less well for me than the same queries run on Google’s government index. Try it yourself. Among my test queries were “ECCS”, “nuclear fuel pool”, and “SWU”. Let me know what you find out.
- The bread and butter of high end professional information services is indexing content from various courts, government agencies, and related sources such as routine documentation about specific programs. Companies generating revenue by indexing public information and adding metadata include LexisNexis (a British Dutch outfit) and Thomson Reuters (Canadian and American). These outfits could witness an increasing erosion of their revenue as knowledge about the usefulness of ad supported or free search services’ ability to offer the same data without the big price tag.
- Useful tools such as those available from Yahoo, for example, make it easy for savvy developers to integrate government information with other services. These mash ups may create more useful ways to look at Economic Research Service data, the reports available from the Department of Commerce, and procurement needs of local, country, state, and Federal entities. Such services would have broader ripple effects than making it easier and cheaper for an attorney to locate a court document.
I have not figured out how important or unimportant the GILS decision is. My hunch is that unless Microsoft and Yahoo can do a better job of indexing US government information, Google may well dominate this information sector as it now dominates Web search. With advertisers and newspapers pawing the ground about the Google Yahoo deal, perhaps some folks smarter than I might want to consider the implications of Google being the primary way to locate government data. A server glitch in such circumstances might make it tough for government workers or citizens to find what they are seeking. The Library of Congress, the individual executive agencies, and various quasi-government organizations seem unable to make their content available and searchable in a comprehensive and timely way. There may be enough Federal employees to print out documents and go through them by hand. A fine kettle of fish is that scenario.
Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2008
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