Protected: Silverpoint’s Last Chance at Greatness Partnered with Sharepoint
January 6, 2012
Open Source India: The Aadhaar Project
January 6, 2012
The EFY Times recently reported on a new identification number that will serve as proof of identity for Indian residents in the article “Aadhaar: The Greatest Testimony To Foss’ Success in India.”
According to the article, the Aadhaar project is a 12-digit individual identification number issued in behalf of the Indian Government by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Each number is unique, will remain valid for life, and serves as a proof of identity and address anywhere in India.
In addition to being the largest attempt at e-governance of its kind, this project is also unique because the FOSS technology team has indicated a preference towards open standards and open-source.
Regunath Balasubramanian, principal architect of the UIDAI project, explains why open source software (OSS) became the first choice for the project:
The primary technical requirements of the project were of scale and vendor neutrality at all levels. FOSS helped us achieve vendor-neutrality in many of our application components, which is very important for an initiative of national importance. The use of open standards has encouraged multi-vendor participation. This has driven costs down and improved the quality.
It is exciting to see the government of India utilizing open source technology to help address the issues facing its people. Open source in 2012 seems poised to be increasingly disruptive in a large market which existing US and European vendors have to find a way to penetrate. Challenge ahead.
Jasmine Ashton, January 6, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
A Look Back at Lucene and Solr in 2011
January 6, 2012
Link corrected, January 10, 2012.
If you’re interested in open source issues, check out this quality write up: “Lucene & Solr Year 2011 in Review” at the Sematext Blog http://blog.sematext.com/ . This is a thorough account of the important 2011 moments in Lucene and Solr history. The article notes:
This year saw numerous changes and additions both in Lucene and Solr. As a matter of fact, we’d venture to say we saw more changes in Lucene & Solr this year than in any one year before. In that sense, both projects are very much like wine – getting better with time.
See the write up for the whole listing, but some highlights include: near real-time search; field collapsing; the ability to model parent-child relationship in indices; and broad language support. The piece also has kind words for Solr’s Extended Dismaz query parser and SolrCloud.
Apache has had a good year with both Lucene and Solr. Will there be even more on the list this time next year? We anticipate significant open source activity in 2012.
Cynthia Murrell, January 6, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Possible Anti-Trust Probe for Google in 2012
January 6, 2012
Will there be yet more friction for the GOOG in 2012? Search Engine Watch reports, “US Senators Ask FTC to Launch formal Anti-Trust Investigation into Google.” The Senators, Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Mike Lee (R-UT), completed their own investigation via subcommittee in September. While they don’t accuse Google of wrongdoing, they say the matter should be looked into more thoroughly. The article reveals:
The senators added that a key question for the FTC is whether Google favors its own online properties when serving search results, and suggested that Google’s own executives had admitted as much during the subcommittee hearings. Kohl and Lee have also asked the FTC to consider what Google could do with Android, warning that the firm could force hardware manufacturers that use the operating system to set its search engine as the default.
Strong points; we’ll see how far it goes.
Google must be used to this sort of finger pointing. I suppose they’ve decided all the negative attention, and litigation, are worth it in their pursuit of Web domination.
Cynthia Murrell, January 6, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Two Big Outfits Knee Jerk Forward in Mobile Apps
January 5, 2012
We track the enterprise applications market on a daily basis. I keep the content separate, but I noticed two unrelated stories this morning and both of them triggered thoughts about information access. In my opinion, one cannot easily do “work” today unless it is possible to access, find, tap into, or otherwise get one’s mental paws around digital information. Those struggling with information overload are desperate for solutions; hence, the Big Data boomlet. There are companies which are increasingly isolated from where the information action is, and increasingly these companies are taking actions that would have made little sense just three years ago. Today crazy acquisitions do not raise a pundit’s blood pressure.
Example 1: Point your browser to “FT Buys Its Web App Maker; CEO Ridding’s Memo.” The Financial Times publishes the orange business newspaper and has a juicy chunk of the Economist, the touchstone of the MBA subculture. A couple of years ago, the FT dumped the wax museum, and I thought the outfit was going to focus on its brand and content. After an exciting brush with digital craziness in the now offline Newssift service, the FT is embracing mobile applications or apps.
I found this passage notable:
Assanka launched the HTML5 Web app with the paper’s in-house product team in June 2011, declaring “the craze for native apps is a short one and we are already seeing it on the wane”.
Wow. Never mind that Thomson Reuters has mobile apps which enjoy a modest audience. Ignore the fact that the Bloomberg app for the iPad is a case example of interface excitement. The FT purchased a mobile app development company. After my spin through a recent mobile app conference in London, I can report that the cultural blend of the FT and its interesting view of online information will interact in some interesting ways with the good folks at Assanka. Yes, interesting.
Example 2: Now navigate to “Confirmed: Deloitte Buys Ubermind, Looking to Play a Bigger Role in Mobile Apps.” This article asserts:
Joining Deloitte gives us a chance to be part of something big—something bigger than we could ever accomplish on our own. By combining our creative and technical chops with Deloitte’s global reach, industry insight, and deep talent, we have the ability to make an unmistakable impact in the industry.
We are also focused on maintaining what was working. The key elements of our business that make us unique will remain the same: our people and culture. We look forward to continued success as part of Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Blue chip consulting and services firms are facing a tough challenge.
First, the best and brightest don’t automatically flock to these companies any longer. Google and Facebook, for example, have more magnetism. Second, the emergence of outfits like Gerson Lehman Group have sucked money from the Blue Chips. GLG offers blue chip expertise at a much more attractive price point. Third, clients are pinching pennies and sometimes are quite happy to hire people who have been terminated with extreme prejudice and will work for less money than a full time equivalent. Fourth, it is tough to market the old fashioned way. Some of the traditional big spenders are retiring and the 20 and 30 somethings prefer to get their business advice without a detour through carpet land. How will a professional services firm leverage Ubermind? My view is that it will not because the culture of what is left of the Big Eight is going to find few protein snack bars in a professional services firm. Accounting is one thing; coding apps is another. Bean counters and coders can be a challenge to blend.
What is the relationship to information retrieval? I see three points which we shall attempt to follow:
First, big outfits are buying companies with core competencies not shared by the purchaser. Management is not exactly the trump card for publishing or accounting firms. You recall News Corp. and its alleged misdeeds. You also my recall the accounting firm which muffed the job at Enron. Now the management skills of these types of professionals will tackle digital information via apps. Long shot I think.
Second, keeping coders on the is difficult. Google goes to great lengths to retain its programmers. How is that working out? About 20 percent of Facebook is former Xooglers. Coders play musical chairs and often end up competing with their former employers. How will publishing and consulting companies cope with these employment behaviors. Maybe sue a programmer?
Third, apps are an interesting development in information access. More importantly, coding an app is an invitation to keep writing checks. The work is never really done. Most apps don’t generate much traction. In the enterprise, apps are making headway, but the consumerization of information access is moving quickly, and I think it is unlikely that outfits like the FT and Deloitte can react quickly enough or sustain the appetite to invest in app cultivation for very long. Yep, I am skeptical.
Why, then, are these firms buying app development companies and not signing a deal for the company to solve a problem? The answer is, in my view, that large companies do not know what to do. Buying a company gives MBAs and clueless managers something to occupy their time. Once the acquisitions have been completed, the real work begins. For the FT and Deloitte, it will be trying to sell enough work to pay for the purchases, sustain technical investment, and manage the technical professionals.
Will information access be affected? Nope.
Stephen E Arnold, February 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Perfection in the Details: Enterprise Search Solutions with SharePoint IVP
January 5, 2012
Today we want to focus on a company that offers a great enterprise search solution, one that can stand alone or work alongside the more common SharePoint infrastructure. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is operated out of Austria. Having won the KM World Trendsetting Product of the Year four years in a row, Fabasoft is now getting positive attention from Gartner and its MarketScope Report.
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise Winter 2012 Release is now available for download.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise is built on 3 pillars: Simplicity, speed, efficiency. The Fabasoft Mindbreeze 2012 Winter Release stands under the motto ‘quicker to the point.’ Perfection is the sum of the details.
Check out the short and helpful YouTube tutorial videos embedded in the page. Each demonstrates a new feature added to the Winter 2012 Release. One particularly useful feature, especially for those already invested in a SharePoint installation, is the additional efficiency added to the SharePoint connector feature.
A survey by German market analysts has shown that practically every second company uses SharePoint. However, in SharePoint only one facet of a company’s knowledge can be presented. The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise 2012 Winter Release puts an end to this shortcoming.
The video tutorial for this new SharePoint feature shows how easy it is to retrieve search results from every facet of an organization’s network, not just the SharePoint infrastructure. Results are not only efficiently retrieved, but sorted and classified. Retrieve an email address? Just click on the address for immediate embedded usability, unlike many other enterprise solutions that only retrieve. No more cut and paste.
Updates such as this one are rolled out monthly for the cloud and quarterly for enterprise customers. Updates are seamless and require no additional customization. If your organization is seeking an intuitive enterprise search solution, Fabasoft Mindbreeze is worth your attention.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Making Sense of Cloud in a World of PLM
January 5, 2012
The key to make cloud solution cost effective is to keep the right balance between enterprise IT requirements and capabilities of cloud-based software. Some of these “enterprisey” cloud requirements are reasonable, and some of them are typical “red-herring”. We are going to watch the process of balance finding in the next few years.
Protected: The Balancing Act of Sharepoint and Taxonomy Development
January 5, 2012
SAP: Long and Winding Road for Search
January 5, 2012
In one of the early editions of the Enterprise Search Report, that white elephant of 600 pages containing profiles of more than two dozen vendors, I described TREX, a nifty algorithm for Text Retrieval and Information Extraction. (The link is to the Wikipedia write up, however.) For those of you who are new to search, TREX is not the creature you wished you had as a pet when you were eight years old. The SAP TREX is a natural language processing search and retrieval system which was mostly home grown. Keep in mind that TREX owns the Inxight entity extraction and server technology developed by the adepts at Xerox PARC. I interviewed one of the developers, profiled the system’s approach to content processing, and pointed out that search was a killer in the SAP R/3 environment for three reasons:
- SAP assigns its own spiffy metadata to content objects, storing these in the wild and wonder proprietary R/3 environment
- SAP systems took and probably still take a long time to plan, implement, and impose on the client. My understanding is that the client does not tell SAP how the clients like to work. SAP tells the client how the client will work with the SAP system and method. Nifty for sure.
- SAP systems have struggled with a wide range of performance “opportunities.” The idea is that when something goes slowly, then the client has the “opportunity” to make changes which will speed up the large, IBM-inspired system.
A few years ago, before Endeca became the new billion dollar toy at Oracle, Endeca accepted cash infusions from outfits hooked up with Intel (yep, the company with the vision that its chips could crush any computational problem because they were so darned fast) and SAP’s investment unit (an outfit allegedly looking at ways to give SAP a leg up on the future). After watching Endeca do its recursive indexing and faceting processes, Intel and SAP shifted gears. Endeca, as you know, is now part of Oracle along with TripleHop (clustering and indexing), InQuira (natural language processing from two predecessor companies), and RightNow (also infused with search technology), Artificial Linguistics, PL/SQL’s wonky command driven search, and probably some technologies I either don’t know about or have forgotten due to advancing senility.
Will SAP slip and fall with its information retrieval solutions? A happy quack to the image source http://personalinjuryclaims1.co.uk/fall-claims/
When you want to run search within an SAP environment, many folks just embrace one of the SharePoint solutions, give TREX a go, or license a system which is compatible with some of the SAP processed content. In short, SAP’s approach to search is not much different from IBM’s or Microsoft’s.
The question to consider is, “What’s next for SAP?”
Several observations:
First, SAP has to pump money into TREX to keep the system in step with today’s information demands. With SAP dabbling in open source and focusing on higher margin products and services, TREX is probably not the long haul solution for SAP. Home grown search is too expensive.
Second, SAP continues to poke around open source software. At some point, SAP may follow in the footsteps of the company which inspired SAP in the first place—IBM. Lucene and Solr look like possible options. This is a trend to watch.
Third, SAP buys or ties up with one of the workman-like search vendors. SAP could either sign a deal to use a third party system on some basis or just buy one of the dozens of information retrieval vendors who are looking for a financial white knight. Despite the chatter about search, many search and retrieval companies are gasping for oxygen. SAP may have a tank and a breathing mask.
What’s my view? Well, since I am a mercenary goose, I don’t have an official opinion. I do find it fascinating that SAP has not moved aggressively to the Lucene Solr solution. So for now, I am going out of town and will wait until my Overflight service provides some solid data about SAP’s next move.
Hopefully it will be more artfully crafted than SAP’s pricing and customer service activities in the last two or three years.
January 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google in 10,000 Words
January 5, 2012
Even though Google is seen as one of the most powerful companies in the world wielding much of the power in multiple industries the Silicon Valley giant faces many challenges as the world rings in 2012. The article, The Future of Google Revealed, on TechRadar, is perhaps the world’s longest pep rally in print for Google and its innovation.
The write up does admit at the beginning that Google is facing a few hurdles but quickly glosses over any of that negative stuff weighing the company down to focus on the bright future for Silicon Valley’s wunderkind. After a lengthy description of all that Google is doing right, the article sums up Google’s strategy with a quote from the former CEO:
As Eric Schmidt explains, the smartphone makes it possible “to deliver personalized information about where you are, what you could do there right now, and so forth – and to deliver such a service at scale.” To make that happen, Schmidt says, Google needs to do “some serious spadework on three fronts”…improving the mobile networks we use to connect to the internet…developing mobile money…and getting smartphones into the developing world.
While we do take notice of Google’s accomplishments and admire their ambition we noticed a few critical components missing in the article. For instance why were their legal headaches and management issues ignored? In our opinion their dependency on ad revenue was downplayed, and, perhaps most importantly, the very real threat from competition was not given enough merit.
Catherine Lamsfuss, January 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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