Disruption Oversimplification: Is Search Taking a Hit?
September 13, 2011
Bear with me here: Techdirt has published “Intellectual Ventures’ Response To This American Life: Oh Those Crazy Reporters Don’t Understand Disruption.” In this piece, writer Mike Masnick criticizes this blog post at Intellectual Ventures: “Disruption Invites Controversy.” That post was itself a defense against accusations made in “When Patents Attack! Act One” by This American Life on NPR.
That’s a lot of back and forth. We’re not going to weigh in here on whether companies like Intellectual Ventures (IV) are indeed evil “patent trolls.”
What we take issue with is the philosophical view of disruption represented here. In this context, disruption is a development in a given market that forces all participants to change how they do business. In other words, progress. Disruption may be inconvenient, but hey, that’s life.
In the Techdirt piece, Masnick says of the IV post,
The entirety of the blog post can be summed up in IV basically saying ‘we’re just too damn disruptive for those silly NPR reporters to understand us.’ But they don’t refute or respond to a single allegation from the report. Instead, they just use the word ‘disrupt’ (or disruptive/disruption/disrupting) five times in a short blog post. If they truly believe that it’s just that their business is ‘disruptive,’ then they could perhaps explain why IV patents of extremely questionable quality are being used to pressure tons of companies into paying large sums of money.
The point of view behind this assertion has the same problem as IV claiming credit for bringing disruption to the patent industry: disruption is not caused by one factor. We think it just looks that way and this outlook is a facile way to come to grips with events otherwise difficult to explain.
In search, for example, the disruption is the shift from search as the main event to more of a utility or tool function. The more significant shift is like the Exalead move to search based applications. Such shifts aren’t necessarily good or bad, just inexorable.
It’s tempting, especially in this sound-bite world, to simplify complex issues. However, such attempts only serve to confuse matters further.
Cynthia Murrell, September 13, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Managing Email with SharePoint
September 13, 2011
Email often means Microsoft Exchange. We came across an interesting article which suggests that SharePoint can also manage email. The CMS Wire story is a “Case Study: SharePoint as an E-mail Management System.”
Our question: Why would we even think of using SharePoint to manage e-mail when Microsoft already has Outlook/Exchange/Windows Live Mail? Another point is that SharePoint wasn’t made specifically for this application, but the article has another idea.
The write up presents an example of how large amounts of data are generated by law firms with specific numbers generated for each client. If these numbers were applied to e-mail content it would quadruple the data amount. The author reports:
Our solution would require a user-friendly method and UI to store email content in the context of the client and retrieve that content and related data to the matter being processed.
There isn’t a commercial product that archives e-mail like other digital content. Most e-mails are archived in digital storage while leaving a stub in Outlook. The author had to create a program that would interact with Outlook, but would also tag the content with metadata to facilitate the profiling and retrieval program. They developed the SharePoint and Handshake Software solution, which allows users to exchange metadata elements from other back office systems into an enterprise-wide metadata catalogue. If you have terabytes of e-mail content that needs to be intermingled with the rest of your digital content, check this application out.
After working through the write up, we see the value in the approach. However, in order to make content findable, the ArnoldIT team would have used the SurfRay Ontolica system. Light weight and easy to use, Ontolica makes a wide range of content instantly accessible to an SharePoint user.
Stephen E Arnold, September 13, 2011
IBM Watson in Health Care
September 12, 2011
Quote to note: A keeper. Navigate to the PR festival in “IBM Putting Watson to Work in Health Insurance.” The main idea, if I understood the write up, is that fresh from the game show win, IBM Watson is going to help diagnose illnesses. The stakes may be a trifle higher than a staged TV show’s, but I suspended disbelief when reading the story. With news about the US government cracking down on health care fraud starting to appear in “real” media, I tagged a quote to note. Here you go. The alleged author of the statement is Lori Beer, an executive vice president at Indianapolis-based WellPoint. This outfit is paying IBM for the Watson search elixir. She allegedly said:
It’s really a game-changer in health care…patients needn’t worry that Watson will be used to help insurers deny benefits.
Sounds fantastic. Now the goose will watch the hands of time move forward to see if the health care “game” is changed and it fraud investigators really ignore a technology that could save the US government billions of dollars in erroneous or fraudulent payments.
I am punching the button on my cheap iPad app which counts down. Plonk.
Stephen E Arnold, September 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
HP Autonomy: Pan Uni Everything Search
September 12, 2011
Fascinating write up in Forbes, the once capitalist tool. Autonomy is soon to be a unit of Hewlett Packard, a company eager to be a blend of IBM and SAP. But red, white, and blue capitalism seems to be struggling a bit these days at least in the US. In this land of beets, red, white, and blue capitalism is not numero uno. Chatter about pan universal everything search is not on my contacts’ lips. However, “HP Might Use Autonomy to Build a Search Engine – For Everything” reports that this type of big search-centric, Google-scale idea is floating around in certain circles. The idea is a good one because Google is, well, Googling along. Yandex is too busy to talk to anyone. Microsoft supports Bing’s slow but sure approach to growth. And for other outfits, search is just a giant money pit. Forbes recycles New Scientist, asserting:
According to the [scientific magazine’s] report, Autonomy hopes to develop an engine that works in tandem with HP’s text-based search system and their own pattern-recognition search system. The end goal would be a step beyond normal search, where data that’s typically hard to organize and relate to each other, like voicemails, emails, and other documents is made much more searchable.
If memory serves, Hewlett Packard once owned AltaVista.com, employed some sharp engineers, and demonstrated that it was not in tune with search. That was in the halcyon days of the Compaq Digital Equipment acquisition. Now it is 2011, and HP owns one of the highest profile search and content processing companies in the world.
Forbes is a cautious, if sometimes confused source of technology information. The article states:
Information’s pretty thin on the ground about these plans at the moment, so it’s hard to say if this is geared towards being a Google competitor, or more of a backbone for more specialized applications on the enterprise level. Or even if, with all of the changes going on at HP, that this project will go forward at all. That said, I think it’ll be something interesting to keep an eye on.
My thought is that this is a very big idea which may require some money to move from marketing to reality. Then, once underway, HP will need to have the cash to keep the system ahead of the Googlers. My hunch is that HP will have its hands full dealing with the aftermath of the somewhat confusing comments about its consumer PC division, the mobile operating system situation, and getting its somewhat ageing arms around the Autonomy acquisition. I find the notion of a new “everything” search interesting. I won’t have to watch the subject. Forbes has already suggested it will do the job. Toss in a couple of “real” consultants, a failed Webmaster or two, and a scoop of English majors and the information about another significant development in search will be documented as thoroughly as the vote about the color of the church tower in Durnstein. (Blue it turned out. HP will be going for a happy face in yellow.)
Stephen E Arnold, September 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Inteltrax: Top Stories, September 5 to September 9
September 12, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, we saw a trend of money saving pop up in three stories this week.
The first financially focused story was “Navy, HP and Others Cut Costs with Analytics” http://inteltrax.com/?p=2304 which briefly explored how the aforementioned institutions trimmed already tight budgets by investing in BI.
Return on Investment (ROI) was another money-centric topic discussed in “Terradata and Company Improve ROIs” http://inteltrax.com/?p=2310 in which we showcased how well those investments pay off.
Finally, on a slightly different note, we took a look at how different users are defining the value from BI in the story, “Value Creation Defined in Different Ways by BI Experts” http://inteltrax.com/?p=2332 .
During these tough economic time, companies around the globe are clearly looking to get the best value for their money, and save as much as possible. Thankfully, business intelligence software is helping solve those two trying problems. We’ll keep a close watch as this world undoubtedly expands.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting
www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
The 2011 Search Trends from Forrester
September 12, 2011
The wave which was supposed to be a tsunami seemed to become one of the lapping ripples that my goose pond enjoys. Slap, slap, slap. No roar, crash, thunder. Just slap, slap, slap. Boring.
Bill Ives’ Portals and KM blog examines a new report in “Forrester on Enterprise Search Trends.” The report was, as the title suggests, put out by Forrester and examines “six key trends to watch” in enterprise search. We monitor the trends in enterprise search here at the goose pond in Harrod’s Creek, and we take an interest in what the poobahs, pundits, wizards, and unemployed English majors generate in their “real” reports.
The six “trends” examined in the report strike us as similar to vanilla wafer cookies. You decide because we are biased toward our own work in this unusual enterprise software sector. Each of the Forrester trends seems to us to be an extension of existing directions. For example, “search managers will initiate business conversations, not gather requirements.” Is that such a seismic shift? I’d bet a list of “requirements” will still be in that IT worker’s notes at the end of that meeting. Then there’s, “business leaders will dictate the scope of search.” Well, sort of. There is the commoditizing angle and the search enabled application movement. But business leaders are important if these management wizards pay attention to finding information within their organization. See the article for the other “trends.”
The write up observes:
As the industry standards for search evolve, the report predicts that vendors will change their products to adapt to new customer investment trends with changes in semantics capabilities and increased usage of search-based applications (SBA).
Well, that’s just business, isn’t it? Any company which fails to adapt is out of luck. Just because something has evolved doesn’t make it a new craze. We wonder: do some azure chip consultants recycle what’s in the Beyond Search blog? Please let us know if you spot any examples to sit along side the comment made to our beloved goose Stephen E Arnold about a certain azure chip consulting firm enjoining its new hires to read the free information available at ArnoldIT.com as prep for these talented art history majors’ advisory career in search technology.
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, an company in Oslo, Norway that published Stephen E Arnold’s most recent monograph about enterprise search, The New Landscape of Enterprise Search. No trends it that report, however. Mr. Arnold confines himself to an analysis of what the six leading vendors’ search systems actually deliver. Which is the best? Mr. Arnold favors Exalead in his new Search 2012: The Incredible Shrinking Market for Search, available on site or via a webinar.
SAP Collaborates with Google Maps
September 12, 2011
Real-time access to location-based data via Google Maps is the goal behind the latest Google and SAP collaboration, as revealed in “SAP and Google Team to Put Big Data on the Map” at LBSzone.com. explains SAP’s Sanjay Poonen,
Today, more and more information is being geo-tagged, and it is unlocking an entirely new dimension for enterprise data. SAP’s work with Google marries powerful enterprise software with the world’s most popular mapping platform to create entirely new ways for people to understand and interact with business information. We aim to provide our customers the opportunity to tap into the power of business analytics combined with location intelligence through a geographic view and use rich, interactive analytics to respond to events as they unfold in real time.
Globally successful SAP specializes in mobile solutions, social technologies, and the wrangling of big data. Google Maps has become the most popular online mapping tool worldwide. The two companies have a history of working together; it must be going well so far.
Google has been inking deals with a number of companies which can give it leverage into the enterprise market. Once that’s accomplished, we wonder, will the love affairs last? Now can SAP get back into turbo charged revenue mode? How many other firms are using Google Maps to “collaborate”?
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Open Source Faceted Search Solutions
September 12, 2011
There is little doubt that if you are handy with the bits and bytes, you can get quite a mileage boost from open source search technology.
Stephanie Lemieux shares her experience in “Open-Source Options for Faceted Search for the Budget Conscious User” at CMS Wire. Ms Lemieux was helping an organization improve their online document search, but the group couldn’t afford any of the big name faceted search solutions. Her research into alternatives produced some open source options.
First on the list is Apache Solr. Its simple faceting toolkit is good only for basic searches, Lemieux says, but can be expanded by a “savvy” IT department or consultants.
Sphinx is the next entry, which she points out is well suited for indexing database content, scales well, and boasts real-time indexing. However, the facet support takes some effort to implement.
Then there’s Drupal, which is a content management system. Lemieux recommends this one only if you’re starting a website from scratch, of course. A search API module enables faceting and can be applied to various backend engines, including the aforementioned Solr.
Lemieux cautions:
Keep in mind that open-source does not automatically equal easy or cheap: if you have complex requirements and end up hiring integrators to implement your solution, you still might end up with a somewhat pricey project. But open-source solutions do have large communities behind them, so development can be faster and less expensive than vendor professional services.
She closes with an emphatic reminder that faceted search is only as good as the taxonomy and metadata that supports it. That’s a point that’s tempting to overlook, but crucial. Keep in mind that if your personal open source search guru heads for greener commercial pastures, you will have to pay to get the expertise to keep your open source search system singing a happy tune.
Cynthia Murrell September 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Google and Its Star Fleet Plumbing
September 12, 2011
Data Center Knowledge declares, “Report: Google Uses About 900,000 Servers.” Recent estimates have put the number at over a million servers, states writer Rich Miller, but new data on energy usage reduces that speculative figure to about 900,000. The data has been compiled by Stanford professor Jonathan Koomey in this report.
Miller elaborates:
Google’s David Jacobowitz, a program manager on the Green Energy team, told Koomey that the electricity used by the company’s data centers was less than 1% of 198.8 billion kWh – the estimated total global data center energy usage for 2010. That means that Google may be running its entire global data center network in an energy footprint of roughly 220 megawatts of power.
Energy efficiency is a focus of the forward thinking Google, which is looking to employ many more servers in years to come. The company has designed a system called Spanner to automate management across data centers. Servers may reach from 1 million to 10 million computers.
It seems that, despite all its troubles, the GOOG doesn’t plan to go away any time soon.
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
How to Use Multi-Page Forms on SharePoint
September 12, 2011
Sometimes when you work on SharePoint you have so much data piled up in one window that it would be easier to have it in multiple windows. “Multi-page Forms with The SharePoint Scenario Framework” from Waldek Mastykarz’s blog discusses how to use this hidden and useful feature in SharePoint 2010. He writes:
The SharePoint Scenario framework allows you to create multi-page forms, where every page can be a separate page in SharePoint (no matter if it’s an Application Page, a Web Part page or a Publishing Page). This is great news in terms of reusability of form sections. Because every page of your form can be a separate Web Part it allows you to build your forms as composite controls rather than giant all-in-one Web Parts. Reusing a particular step across multiple forms is very easy and doesn’t require you to do any changes in the code.
This framework consists of two pieces: Scenario Definition and form pages. When you are using this form you can decide to implement every page as a separate control or a separate page.
And when you separate pages you can create many forms without much work by reusing the common sections, but it requires some maintenance to manage the web parts. What follows is a useful guide with screen shots, definitions, and code to walk your through the multi-page framework.
Content in forms can be tricky to index and then make findable. SurfRay’s Ontolica system makes accessing a wide range of content managed by SharePoint a solution that helps users pinpoint the precise information needed to complete a work task. You can get additional information about SurfRay and its Ontolica content processing system at http://goo.gl/MVF4x
When you’re done creating the framework, check out SurfRay’s technology to help you search through all of your pages.
Stephen E Arnold, September 12, 2011
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