Google and Microsoft Go Head to Head Over Patent System
November 13, 2011
Google is pointing their finger at Microsoft in a battle over the inner workings of the patent system. Tim Porter, Google’s patent lawyer claims the system is broken and Microsoft is abusing it.
Their strategy has been to capitalize on the large patent portfolio they’ve built up when products like Android get marginalized. They end up making money from the success of other companies’ products. Microsoft’s has responded by saying that they are benefiting because of the natural evolution of a new industry.
Ars Technica said the following in the “Google: Microsoft uses patents when products ‘stop succeeding’” article:
“The Chronicle asked Porter the obvious question: should software be patentable? Porter refused to give a straight answer “There are certainly arguments” that copyright protection is “more appropriate” for the software industry, he said. But he would only say that “the current system is broken,” and that there has been “a 10- or 15-year period when the issuance of software patents was too lax.”
Back in 1991, Bill Gates became concerned that the industry could end up in standstill if software could be patent protected in the early days because a larger company could patent an integral and common piece allowing them to take all the profit. It seems like this day has come.
Megan Feil, November 13, 2011
Funnelback 11 Released With New and Improved Features
November 12, 2011
Funnelback , a website and enterprise search provider, launched version 11 of its product on October 1st of this year. Funnelback 11 is available on Windows and Linux and also as a cloud service and has an automated tuning engine and search-driven SEO assistant capabilities.
Funnelback 11 also has new features like updatable indexes, efficient crawling, 64-bit indexing and a new high performance search interface.
According to the Funnelback news release “Funnelback 11 Launched with Automated Tuning and SEO Assistant”; Managing Director Brett Matson said of the product:
“Funnelback 11 has the ability to continually and automatically optimise its ranking using a correct answer set determined by the customer. This enables customers to intuitively adjust the search engine ranking algorithm to ensure it continuously adapts and is optimised to the ever-changing characteristics of their own information environment. A related benefit is that it exposes how effectively the search engine is ranking,”
Regardless of the high praise that Funnelback is giving itself, our take on Funnelback 11, and this release in particular, is that its an annoying display content and that maybe they are trying a bit too hard to impress.
Jasmine Ashton, November 12, 2011
Recommind Named 193 in Deloitte Technology Fast 500
November 12, 2011
In case you missed it because this business was moving so darned fast it did not register, predictive information management software company Recommind was recently ranked 193 in the Deloitte 2011 Technology Fast 500.
The Fast 500 is a prestigious ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America. Rankings are based on percentage of fiscal year revenue growth during the period from 2006-2010, in which time Recommind’s revenue grew 416 percent.
In the November 1st new release “Recommind Again Named One of North America’s Fastest Growing Companies in Deloitte 2011 Technology Fast 500” Recommind CEO Robert Tennant said:
“One of the few constants in modern business is the exponential increase in corporate data.The struggle to find relevant information is draining the resources of the world’s largest organizations. It affects everyone from the CEO to the director of IT to the in-house counsel to the average employee just trying to find an email. Fortune 500 companies are desperate for a new approach to information management, which is exactly what we give them with products like Axcelerate eDiscovery, Decisiv Search and Decisiv Email.”
I think we’re all excited to see where this company is headed and to watch it stretch and grow.
Jasmine Ashton, November 12, 2011
Google and Logitech: Fool Me Once
November 12, 2011
I am not a TV person. We leave on financial shows and when something exciting happens, one of the goslings will turn up the sound. Otherwise, I ignore the boob tube. Some of the younger goslings at ArnoldIT are rich media wackos. TV on the mobile phone. TV on the iPad. Not me. In fact, I always wondered how the Google professionals would cope with TV. The medium is porky, serial, and generally superficial. The ads have appeal, but as audiences fragment, the value of blasting out a Chevrolet commercial becomes an unwieldy task. Explaining the payoff from TV advertising is also tricky. But it seems logical that selling TV ads is not that much different from selling online ads. No brainer, right? The search part, I assumed, would be a slam dunk. How tough is it to point to a TV show. A no brainer, right?
My knowledge of TV bumped up a notch when I read “Revue This: Logitech Is Done with Google TV after $100M Loss.” Here’s the passage I noted:
At a Logitech-hosted Investors Day event Wednesday, De Luca called the Revue a mistake that cost the company well over $100 million in operating profits. The company, he said, intends to allow the device’s current inventory levels to run out this quarter. It also has no plans to introduce another box to replace the Revue. As for why the Revue was a mistake, De Luca blames the Google TV software for not being ready at launch.
Yep, software. When a software company flubs on software for TVs or iPad apps, I ask, “What is management doing?”
Logitech may have learned the meaning of the idiom “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” TV, software, $100 million. Quite a mix.
Stephen E Arnold, November 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Here’s a Reminder about SharePoint’s Power and Potential
November 11, 2011
ISYS Has 16,000 Customers. Did I Goof?
November 11, 2011
I covered six vendors of enterprise search systems in my June 2011 The New Landscape of Enterprise Search. An azure chip consulting firm borrowed a key word from my monograph’s title and put out a report covering twice as many vendors.
Today I read “16,000 Organizations Worldwide Now Boost Their Productivity with the ISYS 1-Click FileFinder.” In a write up about AtomicPR’s spam attack on me and the MarkLogic “reinvention of itself as more than a file markup and repository outfit,” I mentioned ISYS Search Software was licensing its connectors, essentially software widgets that allow one system to ingest the files from an incompatible system. So ISYS, ISYS, ISYS.
Years ago I met the founder of ISYS Search Software in Crow’s Nest in a suburb Sydney, Australia. I recall a very interesting lunch in a restaurant that was almost next to the ISYS headquarters. Very interesting those Australian engineers. At the time, I was doing something for some outfit sponsoring the international chief of police conference or some similar intelligence-type event. I was one of the speakers and a guest of the Australian government. In my spare time, I was either watching folks shoot red kangaroos or visiting search and information retrieval experts. After the visit, I did some work for Ian Davies, the founder. His role has changed, and I have lost track of him, his senior sales professional, and the senior engineer whom I met that day. Distance and time I suppose.
I have drifted away from ISYS because I learned that the company–despite a new president, new lines of business like licensing connectors, and introducing file finding utilities—was not hitting my radar with the sort of information I am now tracking. No problem, of course. Quite a few search vendors have changed their spots or at least their marketing pitch faster than a rap star who signs a movie deal. Examples range from Coveo becoming a customer support solution provider to Vivisimo’s puzzling “information optimization.” Other vendors have gone quiet like Dieselpoint, an XML centric search system vendor. Others have found themselves on the receiving end of a dump truck filled with cash. Think InQuira, Autonomy, Endeca, and RightNow to name four vendors who are now happily within giant corporate shells thinking about which island to buy.
My understanding is that ISYS generates about one third of its revenue from the US and the balance from elsewhere. Although the UK is a good market for ISYS, the company’s stronghold is Australia. This raises what I call “the Canadian question.” Ah, you ask, “What’s Canada got to do with Australia and ISYS?”
Here’s my point. When determining how much revenue one of my ventures can generate in Canada, I take the US revenue and then figure that Canada will product 10 percent of that amount. The reason has to do with population, appetite for the sort of products my team produces, and experience. The 10 percent can be five percent, or it could be 15 percent. However, 10 percent is a good rule of thumb.
Therefore, if a company in Australia generates $10 million a year in that country of 23 million people, then it follows that the US with its population of 308 million should produce revenue of about 12 to 13 times the Australian revenue. If we assume that ISYS is generating $10 million from the land down under, I would expect $120 million from the land up above.
I may be off base, but in our research for The New Landscape of Enterprise Search, I did not find data to support that ISYS was generating revenue in this range. Therefore, I decided to exclude the company from my monograph.
The azure chip consulting firm replete with home economics majors, a handful of former journalists, and a couple of failed webmasters sees the world differently. I think the reason is that the azure chip outfit uses its reports as sales collateral. I don’t have any first hand experience with the “real” consultants in enterprise search, but after reading some of these reports, I formed my own opinion. Yours may differ.
To answer the question, “Did I goof by not including ISYS along side Autonomy, Endeca, Exalead, Google, Microsoft, and Vivisimo?,” The answer is, “I don’t think so.”
Hoping a vendor is competing with the likes of Autonomy, Endeca, Exalead, etc. is one thing. Actually beating these firms in major accounts is a different one. Just my opinion, and I look forward to the push back from the “experts” who know more than I, aggrieved company executives who want me to revisit my conclusions about which companies are altering the landscape of search, and the “real” consultants who will swarm over my view point.
Have at it kids. Sales revenues matter. When someone plops down $1.2 billion as Microsoft did for the Fast Search & Technology system or the interesting $10 billion for Autonomy, I will make another pass over the “big six.” Until then, I need to hear first hand about how non US firms cope with my Canadian rule of thumb. I quite like the ISYS technology. But for Landscape, revenues play more of a role than technology.
Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Apps Sales Data Allegedly Accurate
November 11, 2011
Navigate to “GM Is Latest Battleground between Microsoft Office and Google Apps.” In the midst of he-said, she-said about the GM (either General Motors or Government Motors) account. Forget whether Microsoft or Google lands the deal. The data that surprised me appeared in this passage:
If GM were to deploy Google Apps to the 100,000 seats it has apparently contracted to study, it would be a huge win for Google. No other customer approaches that scale: The City of Los Angeles signed a contract for 30,000 Google Apps seats two years ago, but only 17,000 seats have been rolled out, with the LAPD still stalling. Genentech has about 15,000 users; KLM about 11,000 users, Valeo about 30,000, the U.S. General Services Administration about 17,000, and Rentokil about 35,000.
I found the customer counts interesting and somewhat more modest than I expected. But I don’t use either Google Apps or Microsoft Office. That 2002 version of Framemaker works like a champ for me.
Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
dtSearch Locks Down a Deal with MaxxVault
November 11, 2011
“MaxxVault LLC and dtSearch Announce That the dtSearch® Engine is Now Embedded in MaxxDocs,” reports PR Newswire:
MaxxVault LLC, specialists in enterprise Electronic Document Management Systems, and dtSearch Corp., a leading supplier of enterprise and developer text retrieval and file parsing software, announce that the dtSearch Engine is now embedded in MaxxDocs 5. Adding dtSearch allows MaxxDocs users to accurately search the content of documents to find the information they need – quickly.
This is a bright feather in the cap of DtSearch. The company is a text retrieval veteran, in the game since1991, and purveys its products worldwide. Besides the search engine now employed by MaxxVault, its offerings include spider-equipped desktop, network, and web search tools, as well as an application that publishes searchable documents.
MaxxVault‘s open-system software helps clients manage, distribute, and control documents securely. The company prides itself on quickly incorporating the suggestions of their users and partners. This latest version of MaxxDocs employs dtSearch to incorporate full-text search capabilities.
Cynthia Murrell November 11, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Will a Silver Bullet Save Sci-Tech Publishers?
November 11, 2011
I poked around my Overflight service and noticed a recent news release with the meaty title “Scientific Publisher Saving Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars with MarkLogic.” The subtitle was compelling as well: “New Mobile Applications Let Researchers Study in the Field.”
I thought a moment about the logic of the two statements. I am okay with the idea that a scientific publisher faces some significant challenges. The traditional markets for scientific and technical information in traditional journal form are under severe budget pressure. In response to some scientific publishers’ pricing policies, libraries and some not for profit outfits no longer renew certain journal subscriptions. Others have joined consortia in order to get better value for available budgets.
But STM (scientific, technical, and medical) publications have other issues with which to cope as well. First, technology may not be a core competency. Why would it be? Publishers get authors to write. Publishers package and sell. Technology is talked about but even giants like Thomson Reuters buy print publishing companies in Argentina. So much for embracing the digital revolution. Even more interesting is that some STM publishers often ask authors pay the journal typesetting, correction, and maybe some production costs. As headcount comes under pressure in research institutes and universities, some scientific publishers are finding that authors are either not willing to pay or not able to get a third party to pony up the money. In short, STM in the traditional mode is fighting for oxygen.
The mobile angle baffled me as well.
In my experience, many scientists work in what might be called “controlled environments.” In the pharmaceutical sector, certain firms operate the research facilities the way a South African gold mine superintendents monitor workers at the end of a shift. If this type of security does not resonate with you, you need to do some backfilling on gold and diamond mining security protocols. Think naked. Think weighing workers before and after a shift. Think requiring showers and filtering the gray water. You get the idea. Other types of research does require mobile devices; for example, cleaning up a gone-wrong nuclear reactor which is not a job for an outfit like AtomicPR, in my experience. Public relations “experts” write about radiation and often have limited experience with micro-contamination and chemical decontamination. The point? Mobile often has specific requirements which stretch beyond creating an “app for that.”
In a nutshell, here’s the nub of the news release from my point of view:
Taking research into the field has a new, literal meaning with the launch of new mobile applications built on MarkLogic that are helping scientists better understand soil and crops. MarkLogic Corporation, the company empowering organizations to make high stakes decisions on Big Data in real time, today announced the American Society of Agronomy (ASA) launched Science Pubs, developed for iPad, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry devices. Science Pubs utilizes MarkLogic to give subscribers and non-subscribers the freedom to dig deep into ASA’s journals, magazines, and eBooks while conducting first-hand research and observations in the field.
The point is that a markup language makes it possible to do an app. Puzzled I plunged forward:
“MarkLogic will save us at least $150,000 per year. That is a lot of money for any publisher, especially a non-profit like the American Society of Agronomy,” said Ian Popkewitz, director, Information Technology & Operations, American Society of Agronomy. “We originally implemented MarkLogic to cut the cost of providing critical publications to our subscribers, but we quickly realized several intangible benefits such as speed, ease of use, and flexibility. The flexibility allowed us to focus on the deployment of Science Pubs. ASA is very pleased to be able to quickly launch these services for subscribers and non-subscribers, and we expect them to generate revenue.”
I understand. However, I want to offer several observations based on my modest experience in publishing. Note I did work for a newspaper that was once one of the Top 25 in the world, but the paper is a starved dog now. I also worked for Bill Ziff, mastermind of multiple empires and the magnate other New York publishers loved to loathe, which is what I learned when I was escorted from the New York Times’s president’s office when he learned I worked for the interesting Mr. Ziff.
First, publishers absolutely have to reduce their costs and in a big way. Saving $150,00 is great, but my question is, “How much does it cost to implement a cost saving system such as a MarkLogic or JSON solution (the fat free alternative to chubby XML), keep it up, and then running at a scientific publisher such as the American Society of Agronomy?” If a system costs $50,000, 100,000, or even $300,000, the publisher has to pay off the system, its maintenance fee, and whip out some products that sell. With revenues at many scientific publishers flat lining or shriveling, the savings are important and may light a fire under the agronomists to cope with a big expense in the name of cost savings. That type of race can be brutal. And it is one that I would be reluctant to enter.
Second, many not for profit organizations and “charities” in the UK are facing declining memberships. Unthinkable five years ago, professional organizations have to market to their members and then spend money to collect on slow paying professionals. Even the certification angle in the UK is not working as it once did. Unemployment among professionals is making it difficult for some experts to pay to be in a must-have organization. Faced with rising costs across the board and decreasing or flat revenue, some not for profit outfits are looking at a nuclear winter, not AtomicPR with a very short half life.
Third, the notion that scientific research has to be peer reviewed in a lengthy, antiquated manner. Also, the long publication cycles for some STM journals are out of step with the real time culture in fast moving fields. Not surprisingly, the no-cost or low-cost alternatives to traditional journal publishing refuse to go away. In some fields like mathematics and physics, blogs and even social media have become the important channels for dissemination of technical information and making or breaking careers. Even grants can be determined by a Facebook-type of presence. Quite a shift.
My take on this “news story” is that it makes a possibly compelling case that an XML repository can help reduce certain costs. But without the context of total cost burdens, I have a question, “Why not use JSON?” XML is darned useful, but so is JSON. My concern is that for many scientific, technical, and medical publishers, is JSON a viable option?
The ArnoldIT team is finishing a report about the outlook for a major publishing company. With more than $5 billion in revenues, this well known firm may be forced to sell its STM business to generate cash. Not even cost cutting can prevent the dislocations that some publishing companies face. The digital revolution has arrived and is now moving in new directions. Many traditional publishers face stark choices and very difficult financial challenges. Alas, no silver bullets today in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Mindbreeze Named Trendsetting Product
November 11, 2011
KM World lists Fabasoft Mindbreeze as one of its “Trend-Setting Products of 2011.” Microsoft SharePoint’s main claim is that it makes it easier for people to work together. However, we argue that a uniform platform does not guarantee ease, not unless the solution is customized to the organization and the situation. Fabasoft Mindbreeze boasts a highly customized enterprise solution allowing for not only efficient searching, but also “finding” across an organization’s entire system.
“Mindbreeze understands, relates and combines information from all sources and presents intelligent search results. Information can be grouped and is classified. Users can scan the different categories and spot a particular document without having to click through a list of links themselves. The information’s semantic relationship is recognized and depicted, navigation elements and facets are provided as well as a preview of any result in the browser. With Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise you get a 360 degree view of your business, customers, competitors and more.”
Any discuss of an entity’s entire platform would be incomplete without some attention to mobile devices. Fabasoft Mindbreeze not only supports search and retrieval from mobile devices, but also ensures that access rights are continually maintained and updated on these devices as well.
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile supports your enterprise to profit from new opportunities to e-mail, collaborate and work with documents from any location. With Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile you can deliver any information to your mobile device’s interface and enhance it with context and classification features. Again, approved security procedures ensure that users can only see information for which they have rights.”
Since search is often carried out under time constraints, an easy and intuitive interface is essential. Explore the features of Fabasoft Mindbreeze to learn how this trend-setting solution can work for you.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 11, 2011
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