Guidance for SharePoint Updates, April 2009
May 10, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to an FAQ in the Office Sustained Engineering Web log here. The FAQ is long and contains numerous links to other blog pots and Microsoft knowledgebase articles. What’s in the FAQ range from where to download items to recommended sequencing of the software. The implication that occurred to me was that if the order is incorrect, the installation may not work. Perhaps the most useful link in the 13 item FAQ is the pointer to the complete list of fixes in Service Pack 2.
Stephen Arnold, May 10, 2009
SharePoint as Interstellar Metaphor
May 10, 2009
I was surprised to read the April 27, 2009, article in SharePoint Magazine here called “SharePoint – Black Hole or Star of Your Business Universe?” I don’t think about composite software as a universe. I think about composite software as a potential barrel of rattlesnakes. Julian Warne grabbed the “black hole” metaphor and rocketed into the stratosphere with it.
His argument pivoted on making a case for SharePoint as a “star”, not a life ending singularity. I have met a couple of former CIOs who expressed some regret at their decision to build on SharePoint.
For me, the most useful part of the write up was the rundown of components in SharePoint. For example, Mr. Warne identifies these items:
- Management issues such as cost
- Development paths (see diagram below)
- Metadata “intelligence”
A SharePoint production environment. Mr. Warne said, “SharePoint solutions do not always travel well when deployed.” Not such good news when an acquisition occurs or a joint venture needs SharePoint goodness from two or more partners to the deal in my opinion.
He concludes with a review of the good and bad aspects of SharePoint. He is quite balanced in his assessment. But in my opinion he tap-dances around the core problem of SharePoint; that is, it is not a single application nor can it run or “exist” without a boatload of other Microsoft “server products”. There are more than three dozen of these, and the SharePoint installation might need a baker’s dozen other Microsoft servers to chug forward.
If you are a SharePoint customer, you will find his write up useful. I reminded myself that SharePoint is not a product and it is a work in progress.
Stephen Arnold, May 10, 2009
SharePartXXL Taxonomy Component
May 10, 2009
Some azure chip consultants tout a taxonomy as the spike that will kill the werewolf of information retrieval. A number of vendors have recognized the hunger of organizations with disappointing search systems. I cast an eye over the offerings, and I have visited with developers of these systems. A large number of SharePoint taxonomy solutions exists in the Microsoft ecosystem.
SharePoint Reviews covers quite a few SharePoint add ins. Jeremy Caney does a good job describing a product available from SharePartXXL. You can read “Taxonomy Extension by SharePartXXL Integrates Nicely with MOSS 2007” here. The product snaps into SharePoint and adds taxonomy management functions not included in SharePoint. Mr. Caney points to some shortcomings in the product. In my experience, there are only a few industrial strength taxonomy tools available that provide comprehensive control of term lists. Even fewer are able to generate ANSI standard taxonomies.
You can get information about SharePartXXL’s solutions here. These range in cost from about $1,500 to $3,500.
If you need the horsepower for managing ANSI standard term lists, taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies, you will want to take a look at the products available from Access Innovations here.
Stephen Arnold, May 10, 2009
Sphinx: Inscrutable Search
May 9, 2009
The Register’s Ted Dziuba’s “Sphinx – Text Search the Pirate Bay Way” here is a good case example for open source search technology. Before you cancel your Microsoft Fast ESP license, keep in mind that Sphinx is for structured data, specifically MySQL tables. You can get more detail here. There are some doubters in the crowd, particularly with regard to open source search technology. Based on the email I receive and the implementations I have examined, the open source search technology cannot be dismissed or ignored. For me, one of the more interesting comments in the article was:
Internet-famous MySQL wonk Jeremy Zawodny, who had the foresight to jump from the ship’s bow as Yahoo started to take on water, replaced MySQL full text search at Craigslist with Sphinx. Craigslist used 25 machines to handle roughly 50 million queries per day on MySQL. Under that kind of load, Zawodny found that MySQL wasn’t using much CPU or doing much disk I/O, which means it’s spending all of its time waiting on thread locks. Oops. Maybe we should have paid attention to parallelism after all. The Sphinx implementation took those 25 machines down to 10, with plenty of room to grow. While Sphinx didn’t handle the traffic out of the box at the time, Zawodny was able to patch it to handle Craigslist’s specific need – and fix a few bugs along the way.
The “green angle” is important. The comments about vowels and stopwords are also interesting. Worth putting this write up in the open source search archive.
Stephen Arnold, May 9, 2009
Microsoft Research Projects
May 9, 2009
Hot Hardware has an interesting write up about Microsoft’s investments in research. You can read “Microsoft Spends Big Bucks On Wild Research” here. None of the projects described was narrowed to search and retrieval, but several have “findability” angles.
Stephen Arnold, May 9, 2009
YAGG Plagues Google Gmail
May 9, 2009
Short honk: The BBC reported here that Gmail suffered an outage’. You can read the May 8, 2009 story here. The Beeb’s headline tells the tale’ “Google Email Service Back Up After GFail.” For other Google glitches search this Web log for YAGG, yet another Google glitch.
Stephen Arnold, May 9, 2009
Search and Predictive Math
May 9, 2009
Short honk: Curious about how predictive math will affect search and retrieval? Check out “How Your Search Queries Can Predict the Future here. Queries are useful in interesting ways.
Stephen Arnold, May 9, 2009
Vignette: Web Content Management Wackiness
May 9, 2009
Years ago I had to work as a person poking into a content management system that was costing more money than the bean counters had projected. I recall reading documents, looking at the contents of servers, and talking with in house information technology professionals as well as various content management experts. I came away from the task with a sense that CMS was less of a product and more of a work in progress. Because the client had written vague requirements, the vendor was not responsible for cost overruns.
Then on a similar job in another country I learned that the same vendor was getting push back due to unexpected costs. Since the chatter was the type of baloney that gets tossed around the watercooler, I filed the information in the uncertain cabinet in my mind.
Different vendors were involved in these two content management projects but in both cases, the cart carrying apples fell over. Over the last few years, I have watched as content management vendors raced to position themselves as more than a lightweight service to keep a Web site ship shape.
Vignette 2005
One of the companies that moved quickly from hot niche to hot niche was Vignette. I noted that the company was named a “leader” by a research firm that prepares the equivalent of a horse race tip sheet. I wondered how a company could master information domains described in this way here.
Vignette’s software and expertise help organizations harness the power of information and the Web for measurable improvements in business efficiency. As the efficiency experts, Vignette (Nasdaq:VIGN) helps organizations increase productivity, reduce costs, improve user experiences and manage risk. Vignette’s intranet, extranet and Internet solutions incorporate portal, integration, enterprise content management and collaboration capabilities that can rapidly deliver unique advantages through an open, scalable and adaptable architecture that integrates with legacy systems. Vignette is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with local operations worldwide. Visit http://www.vignette.com to see how Vignette customers achieve measurable improvements in business efficiency and to find out why more companies prefer Vignette.
The description carries a strong message that Vignette was into efficiency, various nets (Intra, Extra, and Inter), enterprise content, collaboration, portals, etc.
Vignette 2007
By 2007, Vignette described itself in this way here:
Vignette helps organizations improve interactions with customers and partners by delivering highly personalized, interactive online experiences. Vignette’s early content management and delivery tools laid the groundwork for some of the Web’s most popular sites. Today, Vignette’s award-winning Next-Generation Web solution powers some of the world’s most recognizable online brands and enables organizations to have more meaningful interactions with their customers and associates. Vignette’s Imaging and Workflow solution adds the ability to deliver and manage online and offline document-driven customer transactions. Vignette is headquartered in Austin, Texas with operations worldwide. Visit www.vignette.com
The company had added workflow and imaging, tweaked its description of user experience and meaningful interactions.
Vignette 2009
By 2009, Vignette had morphed again here:
Vignette provides software and services that deliver the Web’s most dynamic user experiences. The Vignette Web Experience brings rich media and engaging content to life for the world’s greatest brands. Our Web Experience Management solutions help improve interactions by delivering highly personal, social, and multi-channel online experiences. We help organizations win and retain customers by delivering custom content anytime, anywhere, to any Internet-enabled device.
These descriptions omit Vignette’s push into eDiscovery, one of the hottest sectors for some companies in the content and text processing sector.
In the news release announcing the deal, Open Text specifically refers to Vignette in this way here:
Vignette has an enviable customer base, deep expertise in Web Content Management (WCM) and global distribution capabilities. Vignette customers will benefit from Open Text’s expanded ECM solutions portfolio as well as their Vignette products being supported by the world’s largest independent ECM solutions provider…
Performance
Here’s what Vignette’s financial performance looks like from 2005 to 2008:
- Revenue down from $191 million in FY2005 to $170 million in 2008 here
- Income down from $22 million pretax in 2005 to a loss of about $4.8 million here
- Cash down from $197 million in 2005 to $132 in 2008 here.
The downward drift continued in 2009. More detail is here.
Observations
My thoughts on the deal are subject to change, of course. As of May 8, 2009, my view is:
- Vignette had a good day because the trend for the company was downwards, not upwards
- Open Text has duplicative products and a tough job ahead to deal with revenue and customer issues
- The repositioning of the company since 2005 underscores the thin ice on which content management companies are skating.
Will Open Text convert its $300 million buy into a home run? Looks like a long shot from where I paddle in my duck pond for these reasons:
- Duplicative products make it tough to control costs. Open Text may find itself facing a cost ramp that its financial team may not be able to manage
- The bloom is off the content management rose. Licensees realize the cost and complexity of creating and making effective use of CMS. Consultants make a great living running self-help courses and providing tips on damage control, but the problems are increasing as the financial climate remains gloomy.
- More than Web sites require digital information. Systems to cope with rich media, real time messaging, and specific demands of litigation highlight the immaturity and crankiness of some of the highest profile CMS brands.
My call. A horse with a penchant for balking is now in the Open Text stable. The fancy wordsmithing has not worked for Vignette perhaps due to deeper technical and managerial weaknesses? Search remains a challenge for Vignette licensees in my experience as well. Wow.
Stephen Arnold, May 9, 2009
Brin and the Cloud
May 8, 2009
Google’s executives have become chatty Cathies. Click here to read a summary of Sergey Brin’s comments about cloud computing. Cloud computing is important to the Google. For me, the most important comment in the write up was:
“There are a number of things we could improve about these Web services,” Brin wrote. “There is less uniformity across them than there should be. For example, they can have different sharing models and chat capabilities. We are working to shift all of our applications to a common infrastructure. I believe we will achieve this soon.”
I take this to mean that Google will crank up the tweaks to Google Apps and related code components. Microsoft has a rested and ready Google to face in the autumn methinks.
Stephen Arnold, May 8, 2009
Google a Natural Monopoly
May 8, 2009
I don’t think I used the “m” word once in my most recent Google monograph, Google: The Digital Gutenberg here. I was surprised with the title of the Money – Fortune – CNN article “Google: A Natural Monopoly?” here. The question mark softens the message to some degree, but I think the “m” word is likely to become more popular. More people are discovering – albeit belatedly – that the GOOG is a different type of commercial enterprise. I know how difficult it is to communicate the distinct nature of the Google. The company is no spring chicken, and its start up days are in its distant past. Jia Lynn Yang wrote, citing the Wall Street Journal:
As James Stewart wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week: “Google’s continued gains in market share bear out my contention that Google is that rare breed: the natural monopoly. By natural, I also mean lawful, since the monopoly derives from Google’s skill and qualities inherent in the business, not from anticompetitive behavior.” Adds Stewart: “I sometimes get the sense that antitrust regulators, in their single-minded zeal to promote competition, ignore the fact that monopolies, in and of themselves, aren’t illegal, or even necessarily bad.”
My thought is that some effort might be invested productively in understanding what makes Google different. I am not certain the textbook definition of “monopoly” applies to Google. The system makes it possible for individual and companies to profit using the company’s partner programs. Chunks of code are available as open source and in use by competitors. Google’s management seems oddly detached from the traditional approach to product roll outs, pricing, and sales. The company offers free or reasonably priced application programming interfaces to developers. Even a rural Kentucky addled goose can tap into the system to generate information about Google using Google. I don’t think anyone at Google knows or particularly cares about my Overflight service.
My view is that if a great monopolist of the past returned – say, Leland Stanford or JP Morgan – both would chastise Google for management ineptitude. Google, based on my research, has not followed the traditional grooves leading to marketing dominance. If anything, Google has blundered into its role as a digital AT&T. But Google is a platform. If its users and partners don’t take advantage of its opportunities, others will. Because of the way in which information diffuses, the water in the river is different when the laggards jump in. This fast-changing, organic nature of Google sets it apart. I am not sure Messrs. Stanford and Morgan would be able to cope with Google-like entities any more than those who are now trying to describe a 21 st century companies in terms better suited to the 19th century.
Is Google good? Sort of. Is Google bad? Sort of. The boundary between these two extremes is what makes Google interesting. Blaming Google for evolving into a new type of company is going to entertain legions of watchers, make many lawyers wealthy, and exercise the ingenuity of Google critics. At this time, Google deserves a more thoughtful appraisal than smooth, easy use of the “m” word.
Stephen Arnold, May 8, 2009
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