Enterprise Cloud Services Look for Security and Compliance Solutions
February 14, 2012
Christian Verstraete of HP’s Manufacturing and Distributions Industries Worldwide, recently published, “3 Key Reasons for Enterprise Cloud Services.” He argues there is a place for the Enterprise Cloud alongside the private Cloud and public Cloud. Focus on business critical tasks, namely security, is needed for enterprise cloud services to really take-off.
Verstraete also addresses compliance issues as related to the U.S. Patriot Act. The controversial act was enacted by the U.S. Congress on October 26, 2001 at the request of then President George W. Bush in response to the September 11th terrorist attacks. The U.S. Patriot Act gives both domestic and international surveillance powers to the Justice Department for monitoring American citizens and others within its jurisdiction.
So why does this impact Cloud services? Many in the industry have pointed out that Microsoft may have to share information without notifying the owner, which some, like ZDNet, says affected European Cloud adoption. Verstraete explains these concerns for CIOs:
Another area of concern is how privacy data is managed. Google faces probes over privacy issues; Facebook makes headlines with moves that cause privacy concerns. Ok, these issues are not directly related with public clouds, but the moves concern many CIOs. They want to make absolutely sure they are compliant with legislation, and so are looking for cloud service providers that can guarantee that and are prepared to put it in their contracts.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze uses information pairing technologies to combine your on-site data with Cloud information while addressing security concerns, including those surrounding the Patriot Act. Here you can read about the Folio Cloud by Mindbreeze:
Folio Cloud is certified and tested according to the most important standards for security and reliability: ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 20000 and SAS 70 Type II. The saving of data takes place in European data centers – the data remains in the European Union. Folio Cloud is based on Open Source software and is free from American owned software products. Access to European Cloud data by American authorities according to the ‘US Patriot Act’ is therefore ruled out.
Check out the full suite of solutions at Mindbreeze to find what works for you.
Philip West, February 14, 2012
DevEX PLM Receives CGT Magazine Award
February 14, 2012
Award season is upon us with the Grammys and Oscars looming this month. However, Hollywoodis not the only one showering praise on their stars. Recently, Consumer Goods Technology (CGT) Magazine named its best-of-the-best and DevEX PLM Named Consumer Goods Technology Magazine 2012 Editor’s Pick.
CGT “is the leading resource for consumer goods executives looking to improve business performance.” They recognized Selerant’s DevEx, a web-basedPLM software solution, that:
“expedites products to market with scalable modules that include: Product Development, Regulatory Compliance, Product Data Management, and Innovation Process Management.”
These modules seamlessly integrate “to provide greater visibility to the entire product lifecycle, but also integrate with legacy systems for truly comprehensive NPDI control.”
It is nice to see innovation being recognized. Don’t be surprised if companies like Inforbix start raking in awards in the near future. They are redefining how companies find, reuse and share product data. It will not be long before they are taking home the top prize.
Jennifer Wensink,February 14, 2012
Google and India: Pragmatism 2012
February 14, 2012
India is a juicy market. Google knows this, and my hunch is that Google is aware that it dropped a Super Bowl pass when it informed China that it had to do Googley things. Well, how did that turn out? In my opinion, not so well, but Google will undoubtedly find a way to glom onto the world’s largest market. While that kiss-and-make-up activity is underway, Google is demonstrating some pragmatic thinking about the world’s second largest market—India.
Navigate to “Google Bows to Censors in India”, a story in Google’s home town newspaper. The San Jose Mercury News gently asserts:
A Google representative, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Monday that while the company recently declined a request by a government minister to pre-screen content considered politically or religiously offensive, Google now faced a court order and had no choice but to follow it. Google would not release details about what content it had taken down or explain how it planned to respond to the government’s demand for a self-policing action plan.
I think this means that Google is doing what India wants. Good move. Now I must ask, “Is the article accurate?” I will monitor Overflight to see if Google does the Shanghai shuffle and tells the government of India what it should do. With costs creeping up and the competitors getting frisky, Google may find that being Googley is okay in certain situations and not so useful in others. Management maturity or an act of revenue enhancement? Worth monitoring the censorship thing, however.
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Attivio Embraces Customer Support
February 14, 2012
MarketWatch declares, “Attivio IT Knowledge Expert Solution Improves Support Staff Service Performance and Reduces Cost-Per-Ticket.” Noting the bevy of information sources IT staff have to root through, Attivio presents their tailored data management software as the solution. The press release tells us:
IT Knowledge Expert connects the dots between the multiple databases and repositories used by IT support specialists to resolve incidents, identify problem-solving root causes, manage system changes and avoid “system collisions” in ways traditional solutions cannot match,’ said Sid Probstein, Attivio CTO. ‘Our customers are seeing reductions in mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) of up to 40%, as well as significant improvements in cost-per-ticket and customer satisfaction.’
Sounds like it could be promising. Attivio is not the first to apply their information wizardry to the IT sector; many search vendors seek revenue there. Will Oracle and other dominant players fight back? Probably.
Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine has won a number of awards for its delivery of actionable information. The highly customizable platform pulls and analyzes data from a wide variety of sources. We have seen a number of vendors use the phrase “connect the dots.” Do these systems connect dots or merely provide a collection of dots which a human must assemble?
Cynthia Murrell, February 14, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Chiliad: Virtual Information Sharing
February 14, 2012
In 1999, Christine Maxwell, who created the “Magellan” search engine, Paul McOwen, co-founder of the National Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval for the National Science Foundation, and Howard Turtle, former chief scientist at West Publishing, formed Chiliad with the intention of creating a business-to-consumer shopping site with a natural language search engine.
And then September 11, 2001, happened. Chiliad turned its attention to the intelligence community. In 2007, with the FBI as its largest client, the company received $1.6 million in funding from a joint development project with various intelligence and military agencies to enhance Chiliad’s cross-agency knowledge fusion capability by tightly integrating cross-domain “trusted guard” capabilities to support distributed multi-level-security and by enhancing collaboration tools. For the past several years, every time someone at the FBI wanted to search for a name in its Investigative Data Warehouse, technology from Chiliad was working in the background.
Another outfit which connects dots. But Chiliad connects all the dots. Hmm. A categorical affirmative, and I don’t think this is possible.
Chiliad has solved two challenging problems. The first is the ability to rapidly search data collections at greater scale than any other offering in the market. The second is to allow search formulation and analysis in natural language. It offers Chiliad Discovery/Alert, a platform for search and knowledge discovery to operate in parallel across distributed repositories of unstructured and structured data; Peer-to-Peer Architecture, which allows organizations to distribute instances of the search, indexing, and analysis engine in a network of cooperating nodes in local or remote distributed networks; Distributed Search, which provides a search capability that works seamlessly in amounts of structured and unstructured data; Filtering and Alerting Service for tracking and receiving alerts about new data in real time; Discover Knowledge service, an integral component of the Discovery/Alert platform used for navigation and discovery; Discovery/Alert Geospatial Service, an organizing concept for information; and Global Knowledge Discovery technology. Rather than moving data across the network to a central indexing system, Chiliad’s technology allows organizations to put a Discovery/Alert node wherever information is managed. Each node is part of a secure peer-to-peer network that allows a query to be executed in parallel across all locations.
The company serves investigative analysis, information security, and research and development applications; and government and intelligence, insurance, law enforcement, and life sciences healthcare industries. Because Chiliad’s product is a platform, it faces competition in the enterprise market from large, better known vendors, such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and SAP.
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
India: Breaking Search via Censorship
February 13, 2012
Oh, boy, more censorship momentum. Reuters reports, “Internet Giants Pull Content After Warning in India Courts.” Google and Facebook have caved to India’s demands that they remove content considered offensive to Hindus, Muslims, and/or Christians. The government is attempting to head off religious conflict, but is censorship in the world’s largest democracy really the best way to do so?
The Indian law passed last year gives companies three days to remove offensive content once they receive a complaint. The article notes that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft have appealed to the Delhi High Court in a case brought by journalist Vinay Rai. Writers Arup Roychoudhury and Harichandan Arakali informed us:
The High Court has yet to rule on their appeal, but the sitting judge warned in January they were responsible for content on their websites and said he could block sites ‘like China’ if they did not get their house in order. In the Rai case, the court ordered the companies to stand trial for offences relating to the distribution of obscene material to minors, after being shown images it said were offensive to Prophet Mohammed, Jesus and various Hindu gods and goddesses, as well as several political leaders.
Wait, political leaders? Ponder that one for a moment.
The judge may have threatened China-like measures, but India is actually a censorship lightweight compared to some nation states and companies which operate as nation states. Search is tough enough without information going missing and libraries getting marginalized.
Cynthia Murrell, February 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Enterprise Search: Details and Substance Required
February 13, 2012
A quick look at how to implement enterprise search appeared in CIO. You will want to take a gander if you are struggling as many are with failed enterprise search implementations. “How to Evaluate Enterprise Search Options” is a compendium of quotes.
However, if you want a meatier analysis your will want to get a copy of Martin White’s and Stephen E Arnold’s Successful Enterprise Search Management. The groundbreaking book appeared a couple of years ago, but it provides detail, recommendations, a glossary for anyone wrestling with search technology, specification, selection, implementation, and management of a new or refurbed findability system. The book description informs us:
The authors, Stephen Arnold and Martin White, each have over two decades of experience in computer-based information retrieval and in this book share both their practical experience gained through client assignments around the world and their deep understanding of the technology and business of enterprise search. This book will be of value to any organization seeking to get the best out of its current search implementation, considering whether to upgrade the implementation, or starting the process of specifying and selecting enterprise search software.
Yep, everything you need to know about evaluating enterprise search options, including a comment about desktop search. Check it out.
Cynthia Murrell, February 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Inforbix Cracks Next Generation Search for SolidWorks Users
February 13, 2012
Search means advertising to most Google users. In an enterprise—according to the LinkedIn discussions about enterprise search—the approach is anchored in the 1990s. The problem is that finding information requires a system which can handle content types that are of little interest to lawyers, accountants, and MBAs running a business today.
Without efficient access to such content as engineering drawings, specifications, quality control reports, and run-of-the-mill office information—costs go up. What’s worse is that more time is needed to locate a prior version of a component or locate the supplier who delivered on time and on budget work to the specification. So expensive professionals end up performing what I call Easter egg hunt research. The approach involves looking for colleagues, paging through lists of file names, and the “open, browse, close” approach to information retrieval.
Not surprisingly, the so called experts steer clear of pivotal information retrieval problems. Most search systems pick the ripe apples which are close to the ground. This means indexing Word documents, the versions of information in a content management system, or email.
I learned today that Inforbix, a company we have been tracking because it takes search to the next level, has rolled out two new products. These innovations are data apps which seamlessly aggregate product data from different file types, sources, and locations. The new Inforbix apps will help SolidWorks’ users get more out of their product data and become more productive while improving decision-making. Plus, Inforbix said that it would expand the data access to SolidWords EPDM, making it possible for SolidWords customers to get more from data managed by their PDM system.
The two products are Inforbix Charts and Inforbix Dashboard. Both complement Inforbix Tables which was released in October 2011.
Oleg Shilovitsky, founder of Inforbix, told me:
Manufacturing companies are drowning in the growing amount of product data generated and found within different file types, sources, and company data-silos. They are increasingly using a mix of vendor packages and solutions, all which generate, contain, manage, or store product data, creating a hodgepodge of resources to be combed through. Product data generated in a typical manufacturing company can be both unstructured (valuable BOM and assembly information spread out across different CAD drawings) and structured (CAD drawings within a PDM or PLM system). Our apps are tools that address specific product data tasks such as finding, re-using, and sharing product data. Inforbix can access product data within PDM systems such as ENOVIA SmarTeam and Autodesk Vault and make it available in meaningful ways to CAD and non-CAD users.
When I reviewed the system, I noted that Inforbix’s apps utilize product data semantic technology that automatically infer relationships between disparate sources of data. For example, Inforbix can semantically connect or link a SolidWorks CAD assembly found within EPDM with a related Excel file containing a BOM table stored on a file server in another department.
Inforbix Charts visualizes and presents data saved from Inforbix Tables. The product data is presented in charts that include information to help engineers better manage and run processes by identifying trends and patterns and improving data control. For example, Inforbix Charts visually presents the approval statuses of CAD and ECO documents by author, date approved, last modified date, etc.
Inforbix Dashboard dynamically collects and presents important statistics about engineering and manufacturing data and processes, such as how many versions of a particular CAD drawing currently exist, how many design revisions did it take to complete a CAD drawing, or the number of ECOs processed on time. Easy and intuitive to use, Inforbix Dashboard is an ideal tool for project managers.
SolidWords users can access Inforbix apps and their product data online. Current Inforbix customers can immediately begin using the Inforbix iPad app, available for free on the Apple App Store at http://www.inforbix.com/inforbix-mobile-search-for-cad-and-product-data-on-the-ipad/. Account access taps existing Inforbix credentials. New users are encouraged to register with Inforbix to enable the iPad app to access product data within their company. The apps soon will be available on Android devices.
A video preview of the iPad app is posted at http://www.inforbix.com/inforbix-ipad-app-first-preview/. For more information on Inforbix apps, visit http://www.inforbix.com.
Inforbix is a company on the move.
Stephen E Arnold, February 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Inteltrax: Top Stories, February 6 to February 10
February 13, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, how Asia is taking on a bigger role in all things analytics.
We began this search with the story, “Asian Analytics Market a Powerhouse” which provided a general overview of countries like Malaysia that are making an impact with Teradata.
More specifically, “India Up and Coming in Big Data” proved that one of the tech industries most important new players is India, with its analytics-savvy workforce.
To no surprise, we also covered China with “China Getting Big Data Attention” showed us how this industrial powerhouse is beginning to convert to the tech industry with analytics.
Analytics has been a global concern from the get-go. However, the sheer volume of talent and opportunity in Asia makes it seem logical that it will become to big data what Detroit once was to automobiles. We’ll be sure to keep an eye as this continental analytics trend moves forward.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
February 13, 2012
Protected: Common SharePoint Security Mistakes Are Easy to Make
February 13, 2012
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