Search Acquisitions
November 18, 2011
One of my two or three readers sent me a link to “Acquisition: The Elephant in the Meeting Room.” I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other about Mongoose, the write up, or the enterprise search sector. I have identified some of the buzzwords used to dance around the little-discussed problem of lousy enterprise search systems. If you want to catch up on the obfuscation in which marketers and “real” consultants are entangled, you may find “Search Silver Bullets, Elixirs, and Magic Potions: Thinking about Findability in 2012” a thought starter.
The main point of the Elephant article, it seems to me, is summarized in this passage:
Should you be wary of acquisitions? Not as much as you might read in the blogs and professional communities.
The write up mentions a number of high profile acquisitions and provides some color for the reasons behind the deals. My view of some of the recent deals is different from the Mongoose write up. I suppose that at age 67, I have been watching and participating in the sale of large and small companies. I learned in my work at Booz, Allen & Hamilton before it became an azure chip firm, that the reasons for a corporate action are often difficult to discern from the outside looking in.
The table below provides a run down of my personal take on why certain deals took place.
How to Personalize Your SharePoint Lists
November 18, 2011
Lately, we’ve been bringing SharePoint articles that focus on a list of some sort. Now we bring you an article that is centered on “Setting Query String Values on SharePoint Forms Using XSLT and Javascript” from the Sieena blog. In layman’s terms, it gives tips on working with list within SharePoint. How great is that?!
“In some cases, you may want to show your SharePoint list forms (new, edit, display, etc) in a specific layout or showing/hiding values to your will, this is something you cannot do using out of the box SharePoint list forms. But there’s a way to do this, and even take query string values as parameters: using javascript and XSLT data views on your forms.”
It gets even better! The process to personalize your SharePoint is outlined in a list. So it’s a useful article about manipulating javascript and XLST data on lists with a list of steps. In the manner of lists, it’s pretty straight-forward with small steps you need to follow with the new code at the end. If you want to personalize your SharePoint Search as well, Search Technologies‘ engineers can tailor almost any aspect of SharePoint and tune SharePoint search so it delivers a solid return on investment.
Iain Fletcher, November 18, 2011
Mindbreeze Picks Up Where SharePoint Leaves Off
November 17, 2011
SharePoint 2010 is a widely implemented application, but not one that solves every solution. The issue is explored further in, “SharePoint 2010 collaboration ISVs focus on workflow, analytics.” The author, Jonathan Gourlay, reports that users are increasingly relying on a number of independent software vendors to plug the holes in the service that SharePoint provides.
Mark Gilbert, lead analyst for Gartner Research had this to say:
“’Just because SharePoint is a lot of stuff, it doesn’t mean it’s all good stuff, but a lot of it is,’ said Gilbert, who estimates he’s spoken to 3,000 companies about SharePoint. He compares the platform to a Swiss Army Knife that allows the user to add tools. ‘To make [SharePoint] a real enterprise-class tool, you typically have to pay a lot of attention to the care and feeding of it and you have to add a lot of third-party tools.’”
Here’s the main question: if SharePoint is being advertised as enterprise-class, why do so many users need ISVs to bring it up to that level? The article goes on to argue that the opportunity for vendors to build upon the SharePoint platform is huge.
We argue that one smart and agile solution could single-handedly solve an organization’s enterprise and SharePoint woes. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is getting good feedback regarding its suite of solutions.
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise understands you, or to be more precise, understands what the most important information is for you at any precise moment in time. It is the center of excellence for your knowledge and simultaneously your personal assistant for all questions. The information pairing technology brings enterprise and Cloud data together.”
So while experts in the field are saying that system administrators have to hunt and search for several ISVs to supplement their SharePoint implementation, Mindbreeze might save a lot of time and energy with its single easy-to-use solution. It’s definitely worth a second look.
*Disclaimer – Mindbreeze is currently upgrading their website. Links will be checked and if problems arise they will be updated. Thanks for your patience.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 17, 2011
The China Market
November 17, 2011
Interesting but fanciful market data appears in “Morgan Stanley: Apple’s Share of World’s Largest PC Market — China – Set to Grow from 5% to 21%.” There may be more friction in China’s growth, but financial outfits want churn. No problem. Here’s the passage I found interesting:
Based on the survey results, the biggest winners and losers in the Chinese consumer market are:
Loser: Lenovo. 31% own a Lenovo PC, but only 23% plan to buy another.
Winner: Apple. 5% currently own, 21% hope to buy one
Winner: Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). 11% own, 13% hope to buy
Neutral: Dell (DELL). Holding steady at 6%
What struck me was the absence of Google. Has Google been aced out of China? Has Google made a decision that hampers its opportunities to increase shareholder value?
Stephen E Arnold, November 17, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Backup Alternative for IDOL Content Engine
November 17, 2011
WorkSite Zen offers a useful Autonomy tip with “Schedule IDOL Backups with Task Scheduler and PowerShell.” Poster JB Trexler feels the default IDOL content engine backup method can be inconvenient:
The ‘out of the box’ backup method requires you to set a section in each config file with various parameters. This method works well but it does present some challenges around planned interruptions and reporting. What if you want to skip the backups this weekend because of a maintenance window? What if you want a log file of just the backups or an email notification upon completion / failure? In addition to the backups, you also need to copy .cfg and .db files.
Trexler goes on to describe his method for using Windows Task Scheduler and Windows PowerShell to schedule your backups, complete with scripts and screenshots. Doing so can provide more flexibility; you gain the ability to temporarily disable backups, for example, or to send a completion/failure email, or to log to the Windows Event Log. Need more meat? See the source document for more detail.
Cynthia Murrell, November 17, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Attensity Marketing Accelerates
November 17, 2011
In mid November 2011, I attended a conference which Attensity sponsored, spoke at, and shook hands. Since I am a goose, the company wisely ignored me. The firm was describing its technology for running parallel processes within a parallelized database. The phrase I recall was “we have no scaling or performance issues. We have solved that problem.”
Okay.
Attensity’s marketing is accelerating. The firm once focused on the military information sector. After a merger with two firms in Germany, Attensity has shown surprising vigor in a market where pep is as common as PowerPoint.
The company is now borrowing a page from the McKinsey & Co. handbook for big deals. The firm is embracing “thought leadership.” The idea is that software enables a solution. When the company does not know it has a problem, McKinsey & Co. explains the problem senior management does not fully appreciate. Then the McKinsey team descends and helps management solve the hitherto unknown problem. Works like a champ in management consulting. Now Attensity is providing a case example of the method’s efficacy in content processing for sentiment analysis.
The approach is explained in “Attensity Shares Social Customer Thought Leadership Strategies” at Market Watch. According to the write up, the catch phrase refers to “social customer initiatives”. Well, that clears that up.
Attensity seems to have coined both these terms in an effort to promote some of its offerings. According to the press release:
Attensity, the leading provider of text analytics solutions for Customer Experience Management, today announced a series of upcoming events and on-demand resources designed to give enterprise organizations a strategic framework for pursuing their social customer initiatives. The thought leadership initiative draws from best practices and lessons learned in hundreds of implementations with global brands in key industry verticals, delivered in speaking engagements at industry events as well as in sponsored third-party research and a new on-demand eBook authored by Attensity.
With an emphasis on software coupled with strategy, the company has been recognized by CRM Magazine as a “Visionary” in the realm of social content relationship management. From bases in California and in Germany, Attensity helps large companies worldwide analyze and respond to customer feedback.
See the press release for details on its upcoming social customer analytics events. There are also related documents, including their new eBook, available for download from the company’s Web site. We are monitoring the thought leadership situation without too much emotion or sentiment I believe.
Stephen E Arnold, November 17, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Ledface: An Answer Solution?
November 17, 2011
There’s a new tool out for those who don’t want to think for themselves. Called Ledface, the site aims to give members access to “collective intelligence”:
At Ledface, everyone can ask and we will match the question with the group best suited to answer. We select a group of people who match each query and we ask them to interact in real time as a team to create the answer. They share their thoughts, combine them, and review each other’s input. So you don’t get a list of replies, but a specific, custom answer co-created in real time each time you ask. No names, no ego, just knowledge.
The creators of Ledface have lofty goals: they want to facilitate collaborative knowledge-sharing without the complications of crediting sources. Sounds like a helpful tool. . . .
Hmm. So, in order to avoid having to comb through Web search results ourselves, we’re supposed to trust these anonymous strangers? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Ledface and its teams of answer-givers have the best of intentions. However, do we really want more and more people turning to others to do their thinking for them?
Call me crazy, but I’ll continue to examine information for myself and draw my own conclusions.
Cynthia Murrell, November 17, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
What has Oracle Gained with Endeca Acquisition?
November 17, 2011
Oracle has just acquired Endeca for the alleged price $1.1 billion. If accurate, Oracle paid a bit less for Endeca than Microsoft paid for Fast Search & Transfer and about 10 percent of the price tag for Autonomy. We wonder, is this a good thing for Oracle? For its customers? Jason Busch at Spend Matters believes the answer to both questions is “yes,” as he opines in “Procurement Acquisition Alert: What is Oracle Getting from Endeca? (Part 1).”
In fact, Busch lauds the deal as one of the “best enterprise analytics/applications/search deals in history.” Endeca’s Latitude solutions, he says, superbly complement Oracle’s product line. He also notes Latitude, aimed mostly at the manufacturing industry, currently has almost no direct competition. These are definite plusses for Oracle.
How will the acquisition benefit Oracle’s customers? Busch writes,
Endeca Latitude enables manufacturers to begin to not only discover insights and opportunities in their supply chain that usual spend analysis applications would miss, but to ask the all important question “why.” This is something nearly every other spend analysis or supply risk management application under the sun focuses on as an afterthought, at best. . . . Endeca can provide truly unprecedented views into not only how a supplier is performing (or may perform in the future) but how that performance is impacting other activities in the organization.
So far, so good. The article is the first in a series, so watch Spend Matters for further analysis. Our view on the billion dollar price tag? Happy quack for stakeholders and opportunities for Tier 2 search vendors to vie for the now vacant lockers once used by the graduating seniors of search. Harvest and upsell time for Oracle too.
We think the key acquisition for Oracle was its purchase of RightNow. CRM is a hot area for Oracle right now. Endeca may be a pawn move to counter Hewlett Packard’s purchase of Autonomy.
Cynthia Murrell November 17, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Overcome Taxonomy Writer’s Block in SharePoint 2010
November 17, 2011
Protected: SharePoint Creates a Thirst for Information
November 16, 2011
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