SharePoint, Criticism, and a Rigid Microsoft Wizard
June 28, 2009
I am not sure what a Fierce Media is, but it ran a story that frightened me. Addled geese are easily startled as you know. I think of the poem in which a young girl who dies comes alive when she chases geese “who cried in goose, ‘Alas’. The headline for the SharePoint “brown study” was: “SharePoint Director Remains Bloodied but Unbowed.”
Here are some selected fang-like phrases from the Fierce write up:
- “Often-maligned content management tool”
- “Microsoft claims 100 million [SharePoint] licenses, but even if that number is exaggerated…”
- “Coopetition” to “fill in the [SharePoint] gaps”
- “When it comes to document management, Finn [Microsoft wizard] says that might not have as comprehensive an offering as say EMC Documentum…”
- “Finn admits that they are lacking in this area, but says channel partners make up for the gap.”
- “The whole issue of SharePoint governance is definitely a pain point…”
You get the idea. Fierce Media certainly makes me think that SharePoint has more rough edges that smooth, slick edges.
For me the most interesting parts of the story were this statement:
Finn understands that Microsoft is a target, but he defends his product (just as you would expect) and he points out that they were offering MySites, a collaboration environment, in SharePoint 2003 before Facebook even existed, but it didn’t get any attention because it was so ahead of its time. Perhaps so, but he’s certainly satisfied with his market share and he can always point to that. With that kind of presence, everyone has to take SharePoint seriously, and frankly it would be crazy to ignore it.
And, second, there was zero reference to enterprise search. Search is a big deal, and I did not find one single mention of the free SharePoint search, the search tool that runs out of gas at 50 million documents, and the highly publicized Microsoft Fast ESP solution. After spending $1.23 billion, starting a special Web site, and creating a Web log for the product prior to Mr. Ballmer’s stream of commentary about the importance of search, I expected something about SharePoint search. I came away from the write up with more concerns than before.
Stephen Arnold, June 28, 2009
Social Networks and Security
June 28, 2009
Short honk: An azure chip consultant took me to task because of my skepticism about the security of social networks in the enterprise. I direct said azure chip consultant to “Study Shows High Vulnerability of Social Networkers”. No study is definitive, but I find the results interesting. One example: “A third of those polled said they include at least three pieces of personally identifiable information in their profiles.” Great for best pals. Not so great for some enterprise tasks.
Stephen Arnold, June 28, 2009
Microsoft and the Mainframe
June 28, 2009
Short honk: Slashdot’s Microsoft-Backed Firm Says IBM Is Anticompetitive caught my attention. Two factoids or factettes jumped out. First, the write up asserts that Microsoft controls the Computer & Communications Industry Association. I am not sure that I accept this at face value, but the idea of influencing a trade association makes intuitive sense to me. Second, the write up asserts that IBM and its mainframe technology annoys Microsoft. Mainframes are still chugging along because the cost, in my experience, of migrating software is enough to make Fortune 100 companies choke. Interesting write up because Microsoft sees IBM as a bad guy. Microsoft does not like Google and now IBM. Contentious times.
Stephen Arnold, June 28, 2009
The Search Horn of Plenty
June 27, 2009
Bundling is starting to poke its nose into enterprise search. The idea is that one buys and end-to-end solution. Each vendor defines “end”, of course. The customer gets a bundle, in effect, a digital horn of plenty. David Neal’s “Autonomy Launches Social Media Contact Solution” may be a search harbinger of things to come. Autonomy has been among the most agile vendors when it comes to packaging search in ways that strike a chord with customers and journalists. (Keep in mind that the addled goose is not a journalist.)
The release is a module within Autonomy’s Meaning Based Marketing Suite, and brings the web directly into the contact centre, according to the firm. AIMO comprises Autonomy’s TeamSite web content management system, the Optimost advanced analytics marketing solution and its IDOL server platform for search and information processing. The application of web content management and analytics within IDOL means that companies can understand and act on detailed customer input in real time, the firm claimed.
Microsoft, based on rain drops of information falling on the goose pond in Harrod’s Creek, is also in the bundling business. Details of Microsoft’s approach are not as crisp as Autonomy’s package, but the broad outlines are starting to be visible through the torrent of marketing and PR about Microsoft’s search systems.
Autonomy, however, is a trend aware company. Its approach warrants watching.
Stephen Arnold, June 27, 2009
One Win Means Google Is on the Run from Microsoft Fast
June 27, 2009
Network World’s “That Was FAST: Microsoft Wins Large Customer for Enterprise Search” underscored the problem big media has with enterprise search. Look at the headline. “large customer”. What is a large customer? How many sales have been made because one sale may mean nothing or a lot. Now consider these sentences:
In a kick at the folks in Mountain View, the company noted it turned to Microsoft after Google “was unable to fulfill Market America’s search needs.” The FAST ESP search engine allows visitors to the site to sift through Market America’s database, while returning query results in sub-second response times, said James Ridinger, CEO. Market America plans to increase the number of searchable SKUs to 50 million within the next several months. Microsoft’s acquisition of FAST was an industry stunner at the time because of the price Microsoft paid. Expensive acquisitions are not Microsoft’s usual mode of operation. FAST filled an important gap for Microsoft in that it searches structured (database) and unstructured (collaboration, text documents) data and can handle wickedly large volumes.
My thoughts upon reading this information were:
- In performance data I have experienced, “sub second” for enterprise queries is without context. How many queries per second can the system support. Fast Search can deliver but what is the cost of the system? How long did it take to tune the system? Without these data, I know that the information will be taken at face value, leaving the customer with the opportunity to confront reality after signing on the dotted line.
- Searching 50 million any things is actually not too much data in today’s environment. The notion of petascale and exascale are important. Furthermore, what is the amount of time and computing horsepower needed to update the indexes? What is the machine set up to permit simultaneous or near real time index updates? that is what users expect and few systems are able to deliver in production mode without spending significant time and resources.
- What’s “wickedly”? In my own tests I found that updating indexes and supporting modest queries put Fast Search under considerable stress. The issues could be resolved with custom engineering.
Network World, unlike the musings of this addled goose, purports to be a resource upon which information technology professionals can depend. This passage reminds me of brochureware. In my opinion, some anchor points would help me as a reader. Your mileage may vary, particularly if you accept the assertions in this write up as fungible evidence that the magic described will pull a bunny from a top hat. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, June 27, 2009
YAGG: Google News
June 27, 2009
Short honk: The (London) Telegraph reported with what I thought was glee Google News crashed due to heavy traffic. The cause? Users seeking info about the death of a celebrity. So much for automatic scaling and smart software. The Telegraph reported:
So many people wanted to verify early reports of his death that the computers running Google’s news section interpreted the “Michael Jackson” requests as an automated attack for about half an hour.
YAGG is an acronym for “yet another Google glitch.” Google featured a dossier about Michael Jackson in its patent document US2007/0198481.
Stephen Arnold, June 26, 2009
Twitter History
June 27, 2009
Short honk: Quite useful history of Twitter. I want to snag this diagram before it slips away. If you want to see the growth of Twitter, this diagram is useful. Navigate to “The Story (So Far) of Twitter”.
Stephen Arnold, June 27, 2009
Wall Street Journal Bleeds and Blames the Vampire Google
June 27, 2009
In 2007 I subtitled my Google Version 2.0 “the calculating predator.” The Wall Street Journal apparently found that metaphor too tame, preferring the more Ivy League “vampire” as the appropriate figure of speech. The argument in “WSJ Publisher Calls Google ‘Digital Vampire’ is a rehash of woulda, coulda, shoulda. What is different is the escalation of rhetoric. I used the word predator to emphasize Google’s patience and its knack for waiting for weaker food to wander into its territory. Vampire is in step with the pop trend of mysterious creatures who come out at night to suck the blood of their hapless victims. According to some novelists, the victims of a vampire fall in love with the beasts and willingly expose their soft, blood charged necks to the vampire’s incisors. Maybe vampire is a better metaphor. In my opinion, the victims either ignored the overtures of the Google or ignored the beastie for a decade or so. Now that the “surround and seep” strategy has become too big to ignore, the victims are wailing.
Matthew Flamm wrote:
Dow Jones is just at the end of developing a new platform from which to conduct business on the Web … Imagine this future: the Journal is one of the many newspapers you might buy in one place and with one payment… Watch for it. (The person quoted was Les Hinton.)
Excuse me, I don’t need to imagine this one stop shop. That’s what I have with my Overflight service. When that is not available to me, I have my trusty Chrome equipped with a container sucking info from hither and yon.
I am an addled goose, but I think Dow Jones has been struggling to make electronic information pay for a long time. I recall testing a version of Dow Jones’s desktop software in the late 1980s. Mistake after error took place until the Journal managed to find a formula that stemmed its losses, but the revenue is not likely to pay back the investment in the many tries the company made before it hit a single. Not only has Dow Jones tried to create a global news system in its Factiva unit, the company had to pull that entity back into the company because it was gasping for air. I heard that another high tech content processing unit of the company was on the ropes. The reason is that the methods and technologies of these initiatives were expensive, clunky, and tough to sell.
Like the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal has not attracted an audience that tops the Web traffic charts. I am a subscriber to the WSJ print edition and find the online edition too annoying to use. The WSJ has managed to equal the level of annoyance engendered for me in the online New York Times. So that is an achievement in my narrow view. The newspapers are too big to fail. Where have I heard that before. Other challenges include:
- News magazines like Time and Newsweek are in a tactical shift now horning in on the analysis territory that characterizes the features in the Wall Street Journal but these shifts have done little to blunt the shift to crunch news and analysis found easily on the Web
- The brutal costs inflicted by printing, shipping, and distributing hard copies are not going to be easily contained and online revenues are not likely to cover the cash needs of the online business and the revenue short fall in the traditional news paper business
- Google is only one player that is sucking oxygen, not blood, from the newspaper industry. Google is an easy target because it is lousy at PR, an exemplar of the new business models for some online companies, and rolling in dough that newspapers want to get for themselves.
In an effort to control essentially feature stories that could sit on a shelf for weeks and commoditized stock and bond tables, the Wall Street Journal convinced itself that it was a destination site that would pull a Web scale user base. Wrong. High traffic Web sites are not like the Wall Street Journal’s approach to online information. Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal knows best. Unfortunately the revenue and business model have not gotten the message. Note: the Financial Times has followed a similar path so do not get the idea that this commentary is limited to the Wall Street Journal.
I like it when the old dinosaurs roar against the night sky as the snowflakes fall. I suppose the children of these newspaper executives fully embrace their parents’ views about online information. I wonder where the WSJ execs’ children obtained news and videos about celebrity deaths? I wonder how the kids found the info? I would wager one gallon of Harrod’s Creek pond water that the progeny used other services and never gave a thought to the Wall Street Journal.
Stephen Arnold, June 26, 2009
Google Reassures World
June 26, 2009
Short honk: I am enthused about positive thinking. I like it even more when a company with a friction free method for generating $20 billion plus a year in revenue reassures us in Harrod’s Creek that the worst of the financial crisis is over. Yep, lots of enterprises are like Google. Tall cotton for sure. I just left a conference where some corporate types may choose to disagree a tiny bit.
Stephen Arnold, June 26, 2009
Kosmix and Its Positioning
June 26, 2009
I have been tracking Kosmix for two reasons. Its approach is in tune with certain demographic’s interest in having everything in one display, which is hard on the addled goose’s aging eyes. Second, the founder may be a fellow traveler with a Googler for a very interesting approach to information. Manifold opportunities perhaps? The two fellows live and work not too far from one another. And keep in mind that one person is a super wizard at the Google. Kosmix, therefore, is on my radar.
The company is on the radar of the San Jose Mercury News too. “Kosmix Tries New Twist on Search to Avoid Google’s Dominance” by Scott Duke Harris explained Kosmix’ market positioning. Mr. Harris wrote:
But Kosmix founders Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, say they know better than to take on Google or anyone else delivering those familiar lists of blue links. As the Web constantly adds information and images — and as smart-phones and social networks like Twitter and Facebook add new dimensions to search — Kosmix, based in Mountain View, is getting attention for its efforts to differentiate itself as a better way to navigate the growing online clutter. To look up, say, wonton soup on the search giants leads the user to a list of blue links, some with photos. Kosmix delivers a multimedia showcase. The page is topped by a Wikipedia summary, and a quick scroll leads to a sizable window for how-to videos, blog commentary and conversations, nutritional data and more. A column on the right includes items like Chinese cookbooks on eBay and 24-pack instant wonton shiitake soup from Amazon. There are also a few “sponsored links” — the advertising that is key to the Kosmix business model.
Kosmix has implemented in its service a number of the features and functions touched upon in various Google patent applications and technical papers. My hunch is that there is more than friendly competition between the Google and Kosmix. How will this dynamic duo party down in the months ahead? Good question.
Stephen Arnold, June 27, 2009
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