PLM Providers Catching Up with Technology
March 13, 2012
During 2011 PLM transformed itself as the newest industry to adopt cloud technology. This shift to the cloud has created a new race within PLM providers. A recent article, PLM: Changing with Technology to Stay Relevant, on Formtek Blog, explains the newest developments within the PLM community as it struggles to keep up with a world immersed in social media and the cloud.
As far as PLM providers’ challenges in the twenty first century marketplace the article explained,
“PLM, for example, is no different than any other business application in that it could benefit from capabilities that are enabled from the cloud which include:
- On-demand self-service
- Ubiquitous network access == Access from anywhere
- Resource pooling
- High Availability
- Rapid elasticity
- Measured service
Large PLM platform providers may be the recipients of a slew of media attention having just recently discovered cloud technology for the simplification of services, but other, smaller, providers have been quietly meeting the needs of clients across engineering and manufacturing industries for years with that same technology. Inforbix, a provider of PLM platform technology has clearly defined themselves as leaders in data management services and specialize in aiding their customers in finding, sharing and reusing data across departments.
Catherine Lamsfuss, March 12, 2012
The Risks of an E-Hoarder
March 13, 2012
Hoarding shows are popular these days, with TV giving attention to a once ignored psychological disorder, and causing the rest of us to wonder if we are hoarders of one sort or another. It turns out that hoarding may also be an IT phenomenon. Jeff Vance for NetworkWorld addresses the topic in, “Warning: You May Be an E-hoarder.”
Vance explains that cheap storage has lead to the e-hoarding phenomenon but just because the hardware is cheap does not mean the overall process of storage is also cheap:
While the cost of storing data has dropped significantly, ancillary costs haven’t, including data management costs and even costs associated with adding space in data centers and paying for escalating HVAC bills. Retrieval is another problem, since even the best search tool won’t necessarily find data buried in an arcane application. Take SharePoint, for instance. As more people within an organization collaborate through it, the number of documents within SharePoint can spiral out of control.
Gartner predicts that overall enterprise data will grow 650% in the next five years. With the majority of organizations choosing SharePoint for their enterprise needs, one can see SharePoint as both part of the problem and part of the solution. Third party solutions like Fabasoft Mindbreeze can help make enterprise search more efficient and meaningful, helping to avoid mindless e-hoarding.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise is the center of excellence for your company’s knowledge. Highly efficient enterprise search and specific connectors link together data sources in companies and organizations. They integrate the knowledge of different sections of a company into a uniform, linked whole. The award-winning high-tech product is your personal assistant. 24/7, 365 days a year. Regardless of which data you are looking for and with which system you are working with – Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise answers your questions with pinpoint accuracy.
So as the IT world continues to deal with changing standards in content management, third party solutions may help deal with the immediate issue. Explore the solutions offered by Fabasoft Mindbreeze to see if their solutions are a good fit for your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Yahoo Reprises Its Google Legal Tactics
March 13, 2012
I read a couple of news stories by “real” journalists about Yahoo’s suing Facebook. A representative example of “real” journalism appears in “Yahoo Sues Facebook for Infringing 10 Patents.” Here’s the passage I noted:
Yahoo has used similar timing to its advantage in the past. Google agreed to issue shares to Yahoo nine days before Google went public in 2004 in exchange for a license to Yahoo’s patents. Google later took a $201 million non-cash charge related to the transaction. In deciding to sue Facebook, Yahoo has retained the same law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, used by Google and other manufacturers in many Android-related smartphone patent cases. Google is a player in social media with its Google+ service.
I recall to run up to Google’s initial public offering. Yahoo sued the Google. My recollection is that the allegations were related to Google’s advertising system and method. Yahoo obtained some know how when it purchased Overture. I think the Google spit out more than $200 million make the legal matter go away.
Here’s how I interpreted the Yahoo action. Yahoo sued Google for alleged infringement of the systems and methods for online advertising. Facebook has lots of Xooglers. Facebook developed online advertising. Therefore, maybe some Xooglers may ispired Yahoo’s action. I call this “where there are Xooglers, there is the possibility of intellectual fire.”
Those friendly, halcyon days in plastic fantastic land are now forever gone. Sniff. I smell a fire in the valley.
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Reference Resource for Big Data Vendors
March 13, 2012
SoftArtisians and Riparian Data have been reporting on a series that examines some of the key players in Boston’s emerging big data scene.
The recent article, “Boston’s Big Datascape, Part 2: Nasuni, VoltDB, Lexalytics, Totutek, Cloudant” is the second in the series and examines five companies who may differ in their growth stages and approach but are similar in their ideology that “big data is the castle, and their tools [are] the keys.”
The article breaks each company down by product, founder, technologies used, target industries, and location.
Tokutek’s mission is to transform the way data is stored and retrieved and deliver a quantum leap in the performance of databases and file systems. The company breakdown was:
“Product: TokuDB brings massive data processing and analysis capabilities to heretofore neglected MySQL. It’s a drop-in replacement for InnoDV that extends the capacity of MySQL databases from GBs to TBs.
Founders: Michael A. Bender, Martín Farach-Colton (ln), Bradley C. Kuszmaul
Technologies used: MySQL, MVCC, ACID, Fractal Tree™ indexing
Target industries: Online Advertising, eCommerce, Social Networking, Mobile Solutions, ePublishing.”
We’re interested to see how this series develops and the innovative new companies that come about from it.
Jasmine Ashton, March 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Baidu Could Be Winning the Search Battle in China
March 13, 2012
When covering tech news in Asia, The Next Web recently reported on Google’s approach in China in the article “Sizing up two Internet Giants: Google vs Baidu in China.”
According to the article, despite the fact that there is little known of the Chinese search engine outside of the country, Baidu is doing far better than Google in China’s core market of Internet search. Baidu currently controls 83.6 percent of all searches in China against Google’s 11.1 percent. However, when you compare revenue, the American search typhoon is making is making more than $155 million from search alone in China.
The article states some key differences between Google and Baidu in the form of questions:
Were you aware, for example, that Baidu has more than 50 communities and services online, including maps, an encyclopedia, a mobile OS and more? Did you realize that Google briefly held a 2 percent share of the Chinese search giant before it entered China itself? Do you know that Baidu prioritizes paid search terms above organic results without any limitation on the number that appear?
Will Google be able to branch into China’s search market and beat out Baidu? I recall that Google wanted China to change its governmental policies to fit Google’s vision. I wonder how well that is working?
Jasmine Ashton, March 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
More NASA Technical Excitement: Hackers in the Entity
March 13, 2012
One hopes that some good will come of this.
At one point last year, “Hackers Had ‘Full Functional Control’ of NASA Computers,” reports BBC News. NASA had 5,408 computer security incidents in 2010 and 2011. Furthermore, from April 2009 and April 2011, the agency lost track of 48 its own mobile computing devices through loss or theft. On top of that, this incident; the article reports:
“[NASA Inspector General Paul K.] said that the attackers had ‘full system access’ and would have been able to ‘modify, copy, or delete sensitive files’ or ‘upload hacking tools to steal user credentials and compromise other NASA systems’. . . . Mr. Martin said NASA was a ‘target-rich environment for cyber attacks’. He said that the motivation of the hackers ranged from ‘individuals testing their skill to break into NASA systems, to well-organized criminal enterprises hacking for profit, to intrusions that may have been sponsored by foreign intelligence services’”.
Graduated degrees of bad news for the agency. NASA has since claimed “significant progress to protect the agency’s IT systems.” Note they don’t claim it’s locked down tight.
Officials do insist that “at no point in time have operations of the International Space Station been in jeopardy due to a data breach.” That’s good to know.
NASA has been licensing nifty technology to help the agency “manage knowledge.” Let’s hope NASA gets its knowledge under control or there will be more unfortunate incidents at an agency which is supposed to be darned good at technology. I am beginning for formulate some doubts about NASA’s technical capabilities.
Cynthia Murrell, March 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Are We Ready for More Watson?
March 13, 2012
No, here at Beyond Search we are ready for a live online demo. We are not ready for more PR, however.
On the year anniversary of its creation, Fern Halper’s Data Makes the World Go ‘Round has provided inquisitive minds with a rundown of IBM’s supercomputer, Watson in the article, “Are You Ready for IBM Watson?”
The blog post is broken down into three informative sections, entitled “What is Watson and why is it unique?” “Can I buy Watson?” and finally, “Ready for Watson?”
For those who are unfamiliar with this device, Watson is a set of technologies that process and analyze massive amounts of both structured and unstructured data in a unique way. A noteworthy fact: Watson analyze information from 200 million books in three seconds.
Consumers are unable to purchase Watson at this time, however:
“IBM recently rolled out its “Ready for Watson.” The idea is that a move to Watson might not be a linear progression. It depends on the business problem that companies are looking to solve. So IBM has tagged certain of its products as “ready” to be incorporated into a Watson solution. IBM Content and Predictive Analytics for Healthcare is one example of this. It combines IBM’s content analytics and predictive analytics solutions that are components of Watson.”
Some people are nervous while others are excited about what the mass production of Watson could be. Our we ready for Watson? How about that live online demo?
Jasmine Ashton, March 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: Curation Means from Somewhere Else
March 13, 2012
Short honk: I find it fascinating that today’s generation of journalists, blog experts, journalists, and information gurus with “at” signs as part of their names don’t use library reference tools. Sure, these “experts” assert that each and every one knows how to search and “do research.”
Navigate to “A Code of Conduct for Content Aggregators” if the link is still valid. The story appears in the New York Times, an outfit which has more content which is sometimes there and sometimes not. The story is about content aggregators and a “code of conduct” for those creatures. The idea is that someone thinks creating new graphics to indicate that stories come from somewhere else.
Consider this passage:
She [a person suggesting a content curation code] is careful about attribution and thinks others should be mindful as well. The Curator’s Code is a shorthand tool to signify that on the Web, most things come from somewhere else. Neither of these initiatives seems intended to serve as a posse to bring justice and order to the digital Wild West. In a sense, they are an effort to bring back the promise of the consumer Internet, creating visible connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information. It’s called the Web for a reason, after all.
I agree, most things come from somewhere else. Is not learning anchored in that method?
The origin of a bibliographic citation and abstract presented as a blog post in Beyond Search. Too bad most of the “experts” tracking multimedia have not donned white gloves and examined source documents and the often prescient glosses. Oh, I forgot. That’s not what “real” journalists and experts do. My apologies.
My thought is that codes are okay, but the core method is one of selection, citation, and commentary. In the scriptorum (alternate spelling scriptorium) (you know what that is, gentle reader), patient folk would add a gloss to a document. Then when books became the cat’s pajamas, some folks created citations which provided information about the book. Citations about books became catalogs. Write ups about individual articles became bibliographic citations with or without an abstract of the source.
Beyond Search is a hybrid. It combines the ABI/INFORM type of abstract, a citation (now expressed as a link), and a critical comment by the librarian or professional who creates the information. You can, for example, use one of the search boxes to locate information on a specific topic. The top box on the Beyond Search Web page provides access to the Blossom Software index. Blossom is a search system developed by a person who was at Bell Labs when Howard Flank and I were doing the MARS (market analysis and retrieval service) and BASIS implementation for the outfit. The other search box is an implementation of the Google Custom Search Engine. The idea is that a person visiting Beyond Search can get a sense of how two different systems process the same corpus of content.
Will Beyond Search implement a graphic gizmo? Nope. Will I change what is has been doing for the last 30 years? Nope. Will I keep in mind that on the Web “most things come from somewhere else”? Nope. The value of a series of citations generated for the query “Autonomy” in this blog is that I have a quick way of seeing the milestones in that company’s business trajectory.
The flaw in curation comes from some “experts” failure to see that the gloss of scriptorum laborers is alive and well in certain Web logs. No one thinks of a copyist creating a version of Euclid’s geometry. What’s clear to me is that we now have a generation of folks who don’t know much about reference works like Constance Winchell’s Guide to Reference Books, 8th edition, commercial databases like Chemical Abstracts, or the value of annotated bibliographies with critical commentary.
Journalists and self appointed experts no longer can be given a free pass when it comes to citation-centric content objects. But if you think news is your hammer, then every problem is one that one can pound with the journalistic Jingo. A little more fine grained thinking would make this addled goose a trifle more calm.
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
More on the Ignorance of Online Users
March 12, 2012
Some folks do not recall the Frenchman who toured the US. A couple of centuries ago, the notion of democracy worked out to a C average. There were some A students and some Fs. But the logic, as I understood the Frenchman, was blah. You may want to refresh your memory of Democracy in America, but may be not. There are basketball games to watch and Peyton Manning’s peregrinations to follow.
I read “Nick Denton on the “‘Tragedy of the Comments’” and thought about how “easy” search, business intelligence, and finding pizza have become. Even conference organizers take the C or average approach, preferring to use the same speaker in several different sessions. Hey, the person is an expert and it is much easier to sign up speakers if we recycle “proven performers”.
Here is a passage from the Denton item which caught my attention:
Once upon a time, in the early days of blogging, Gawker founder Nick Denton said, publishers hoped that the Web would help them “capture the intelligence of the readership.” But now? “That’s a joke,” he said. “That didn’t happen,” Denton said at South by Southwest, in a conversation with blogger and entrepreneur Anil Dash. “It’s a promise that has so not happened that people don’t even have that ambition any more.” The hope was that the Internet would boost the quality of public conversation and let writers and readers collaborate on stories, but instead, he said, there’s been a “tragedy of the commons… or tragedy of the comments.”
Fascinating shift from confidence in any one creating content to a more traditional view. The idea that a poobah knows best seems to be roaring back. It is probably good to be a poobah or at least to think that one is one. Who will be the next William Hearst?
Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Are Search Vendors Embracing Desperation PR?
March 12, 2012
The addled goose is in recovery mode. I have been keeping my feathers calm and unruffled. I am maintaining a low profile. I have undertaken no travel for 2.5 months. I just float amidst the detritus of my pond filled with mine drainage run off. I don’t send spam. I don’t make sales calls. I don’t talk on the phone unless someone pays me. In short, I am out of gas, at the end of the trail, and ready for my goose to be cooked, but I want to express an opinion about desperation marketing as practiced by public relation professionals and PR firms’ search related clients.
A mine drainage pond. I stay here. I mind my business. I don’t spam unlike AtomicPR and Voce Communications type firms. In general, I bristle at desperation marketing, sales, and public relations.
Imagine my reaction when I get unsolicited email from a PR firm such as Porter Novelli. This Porter Novelli PR firm is my newest plight. Mercifully AtomicPR has either removed me from its spam list or figured out that I sell time just like an attorney but write about PR spam with annoying regularity.
The Porter Novelli outfit owns something call Voce Communications. Voce thinks I am a “real” journalist. I have been called many things, but “journalist” is a recent and inaccurate appellation. The only problem is that I sell time. In my opinion, “real” journalists mostly look for jobs, pretend to be experts on almost anything in the dictionary, worry about getting fired, or browse the franchise ads looking for the next Taco Bell type opportunity.
Spamming me and then reprimanding me for charging for my time are characteristics of what I call desperation marketing. In the last six months, desperation marketing is the latest accoutrement of the haute couture in PR saucisson. Deperation PR is either in vogue or a concomitant of what some describe as a “recovering economy.”
Here’s the scoop: I received an email wanting me to listen to some corporate search engine big wigs tell me about their latest and greatest software widget. The idea, even when I am paid to endure such pression de gonflage is tiring. When someone wants me to participate in a webinar, the notion is downright crazy. I usually reply, “Go away.”
To the Voce “expert” I fired off an email pointing the spammer to my cv (www.arnoldit.com/sitemap.html) and the About page of this blog. Usually the former political science major or failed middle school teacher replies, “We saw that you were a journalist in a list of bloggers.” After this lame comment, the PR Sasha or Trent stops moves on. No such luck with Voce’s laser minded desperation PR pro.
Here’s what I received:
[Bunny Rabbit] on behalf of EntropySoft. We have not yet had an opportunity to work together formally yet, but I wanted to reach out to you to see if we can arrange a conversation for you with the executives at EntropySoft – a company that I know you are familiar with given your recent conversation with BA Insights (which is an EntropySoft partner that uses our connector technology) and I know that you have mentioned EntropySoft in past articles for KMWorld.
The advantage that EntropySoft brings to the market is that through the use of its connector technology, EntropySoft can help companies make sense of unstructured data (or as you describe it – tsunami!) ensuring that IT teams can not only access or connect to just about everything worth connecting to in the KM universe, but that they can also act on it. Each EntropySoft connection is bi-directional: teams can access and act on everything. So from a SharePoint standpoint, EntropySoft’s connectors can now connect to everything in SharePoint (we just made news on this last week at the SPTechConference in San Francisco, see press release below) enabling search through FAST for SharePoint or the SharePoint Search Server Portal engine, as well as any other enterprise content management systems.
Do you have some available time on your calendar in the next week to have a phone conversation with EntropySoft? Please let me know what works for you.
Okay, I sure do know about EntropySoft. I have French clients. The two top chiens at EntropySoft know me and find me less than delectable. In the last year, the company has gunned its engine with additional financing, but for me, the outfit provides code widgets which hook one system to another. Useful stuff, but I am not going to flap my feathers in joy about this type of technology. Connectors are available from Oracle, open source, and outfits in Germany and India. Connector technology is important, but it is like many utility-centric technologies—out of sight and out of mind until the exception folder overflows. Then connectors get some attention. How often do you think about exporting an RFT 1.6 file from Framemaker? Exactly. Connectors. There but not the bell of the ball at the technology prom.
A book promoted on the Voce Communications Web site. I was not offered a “free” copy. I bet the book is for sale, just like my time. What would happen if I call the author and asked for a free copy? Hmmm.
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
