Agile Solutions for Big Data Make Exabytes Less Overwhelming
November 14, 2012
Many narratives follow the phrase big data and ZDNet discusses the story that EMC tells about big data. Katharin Winkler, vice president of corporate sustainability for EMC, explained the elusive concept in layman’s terms at the Verge @ Greenbuild summit. The main reason that this concept needs to be brought down to a lower level is because big data is affecting everyone’s lives. It has effectively “escaped the data center.”
Back in 2000, two exabytes of new information were created in the world. In 2011, Winkler said the world was creating data at a rate of more than two exabytes of new information everyday.
In the article, “EMC Explains Making Big Data More Concrete to General Public” we learned about EMC’s strategy:
Winkler briefly outlined EMC’s overall strategy, dubbed “The Human Face of Big Data,” which is designed make big data more comprehensible for everyday Internet users. That strategy includes a book of the same name being published later this month, which features images from more than 150 photojournalists worldwide, demonstrating that basically every moment of our lives can now be chronicled in the cloud.
The possibilities with big data may seem overwhelming at times. Inherently, the opportunities are endless. However, these insights and information can only be delivered to decision-makers with the proper infrastructure technologies in place. We have had our eyes on PolySpot for their agile solutions in this department.
Megan Feil, November 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
New KnowledgeLake Capture Features Announced
November 14, 2012
KnowledgeLake, Inc., headquartered in St. Louis, develops document imaging related products and solutions for Microsoft SharePoint. In the press release, “KnowledgeLake Continues to Advance the Capabilities of Capture Solution for Microsoft SharePoint,” some new KnowledgeLake capabilities are announced. The author states:
Tightly integrated with Microsoft SharePoint, KnowledgeLake Capture enables end users to easily scan and index documents and store them in the appropriate SharePoint repository. A few of the new developments added to the robust solution include the ability to scan and index documents faster, scan multiple batches at a time, added language support and advances to prioritization functionality.
This is also added about Capture capabilities:
Capture’s sophisticated Batch Processing and Monitoring, allow for multiple documents of many different types to be scanned, viewed and indexed efficiently.
It seems like KnowledgeLake is making a few strides in SharePoint solution development. But when it comes to extending SharePoint capabilities, you may want to consider industry leaders, like Mindbreeze, that provide more than just SharePoint tailored services and have already been offering robust document indexing capabilities. Fabasoft Mindbreeze provides comprehensive access to business knowledge for everyone on the team and is backed by a customer focused support team that shares your purpose. The Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange Connectors facilitate comprehensive incorporation of all your electronic data repositories.
Philip West, November 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Liferay Launches Operations in Japan
November 14, 2012
Liferay, a provider of an enterprise class open source portal platform, is expanding its operations into Japan. Liferay is enjoying the momentum being built by open source solutions in general, as organizations see the benefits of open source for the enterprise without a hefty price tag. PRWeb covers the full press release in the article, “Liferay Launches Japan Operations.”
The author gets the input of the Liferay CEO:
“‘Organizations around the world are embracing the innovation, business agility, and lower cost of ownership benefits of open source,’ said Liferay CEO Bryan Cheung, who will be giving the keynote at the launch event. ‘We’re excited to make new connections and explore how Liferay can help solve the quickly evolving business challenges of enterprise users in the Asia Pacific region.’”
Open source does boost innovation and agility all while lowering costs. However, many open source solutions are not viable options for smaller organizations because of the high developer needs for customization and implementation. LucidWorks is one open source solution provider for the enterprise that ensures that solutions are ready to go out-of-the-box. LucidWorks Search is commercial grade and fully backed by the industry-trusted support of the LucidWorks team. Open source will continue to make headlines for its innovative advancements; however, when it comes to a practical open source solution, LucidWorks cannot be beat.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Keep It Separated
November 14, 2012
Respect data decentralization. That is the key to “The Challenge of Defensible Deletion of Distributed Legacy Data,” according to the eDiscovery Law & Tech Blog at X1 Discovery.
Blogger John Patzakis submits that, for large enterprises with data subject to governance requirements, centralization can make it hard to create a defensible retention schedule. Most archiving systems require that bits of data be pulled from their cozy homes on group and departmental silos and dumped into a central system before any retention and management process can even begin. He writes:
“Forcing centralization on these many pockets of productivity is highly disruptive and rarely effective due to scalability, network bandwidth and other logistical challenges. So what this leaves is the reality that for any information remediation process to be effective, it must be executed within these departmentalized information silos.”
Not surprisingly, Patzakis recommends one of X1’s own products, X1 Rapid Discovery, to do just that. The company has produced an hour-long webinar outlining their method. According to the article:
“X1 Rapid Discovery represents game-changing technology to effectuate the remediation of distributed legacy data due to its ability to install on demand virtually anywhere in the enterprise, including remote data silos, its light footprint web browser access, and intuitive interface. X1 Rapid Discovery enables for effective assessment, reporting, categorization and migration and remediation of distributed information assets by accessing, searching and managing the subject data in place without the need for migration to the appliance or a central repository.”
Sounds good. It may well be that X1 Rapid Discovery is the best solution for this process, or maybe not. Either way, the webinar could be worth a gander.X1 Discovery makes e-discovery tools and enterprise search solutions for IT and legal professionals. Founded by Idealab, the company is located in Pasadena, CA.
Cynthia Murrell, November 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Hello Siri Google is Coming for You
November 14, 2012
Google has been trying to come out with a rival to Apple’s Siri for months now. While those who have new Android products are able to utilize Google Now, until now, there has not been a Google app to bring instant information to non-Google smartphones. LifeHacker.com recently published the article, “Chat with Google Guru to Get Google Now Style Answers on Any Device.”
According to the article, for those who want Google Now style data but do not have an Android product, there is now an easy solution. All you have to do is add guru@googlelabs.comto your contact list on your smartphone. Then ask Google Guru what you want to know and receive instant replies.
The article explains:
“Granted, this works best with Android devices, since Android has a built-in GTalk client. iOS users will have to use a third party app, like our favorite, Imo, to get the same features. Once Guru is in your contacts list, commands like “weather: city” will give you the current conditions in that location, and “score: team” will help you find the score of a game you’re interested in, or the last game your favorite team played. Here are all of the commands guru understands as far as we can tell:
- Score: team
- Weather: city
- Define: word
- Translate: word
- Web: query (performs a Google web search)
- Calculate: formula”
While it doesn’t have all of the features of Siri or Google Now, Google Guru could lead to some potential competition for Apple if more non-Android smartphones begin using it.
Jasmine Ashton, November 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
ElasticSearch: Was Google Right about Simplicity?
November 13, 2012
When the Google Search Appliance became available nine or 10 years ago, I was the victim of a Google briefing. The eager Googler showed me the functions of the original Google Search Appliance. I was not impressed. As I wrote in the Google Legacy, the GSA was a “good start” and showed promise.
But one thing jumped out at me. Google’s product planners had identified the key weakness or maybe “flaw” in most of the enterpriser search solutions available a decade ago—Complexity. No single Googler could install Autonomy, Endeca, Fast Search & Transfer, or Convera without help from the company. Once the system was up and running, not even a Googler could tune the system, perform reliable hit boosting, or troubleshoot indexers which could not update. Not surprisingly, most of the flagship enterprise search systems ran up big bills for the licensees. One vendor went down in flames because there were not enough engineers to keep the paying customers happy. So ended an era of complexity with the Google Search Appliance.
I may have been wrong.
I just read “Indexing BigData with ElasticSearch.” If you are not familiar with ElasticSearch (formerly Compass), think about the Compass search engine and the dozens of companies surfing on Lucene/Solr to get in the search game. Even IBM uses Lucene/Solr to slash development costs and free up expensive engineers for more value added work like the wrappers that allow Watson to win a TV game show. I have completed for IDC an analysis of 13 open source search vendors and some of these profiles are available for only $3,500 each. See http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=236511 for an example.
Is your search system as easy to learn to ride as a Big Wheel toy? If not, there may be some scrapes and risks ahead. In today’s business climate, who wants to incur additional risks or costs in a pursuit of a short cut only a developer can appreciate. Not me or the CFOs I know. A happy quack to http://www.bigwheeltricycle.net/ for this image.
The write up explains how to perform Big Data indexing with ElasticSearch. I urge you to read the write up. Consider this key passage:
The solution finally appeared in the name of ElasticSearch, an open-source Java based full text indexing system, based on the also open-source Apache Lucene engine, that allows you to query and explore your data set as you collect it. It was the ideal solution for us, as doing BigData analysis requires a distributed architecture.
Sounds good. With a fresh $10 million ElasticSearch seems poised to revolutionize the world of enterprise search, big data, and probably business intelligence, search based applications, and unified information access. Why not? Most open source vendors exercise considerable license in an effort to differentiate themselves from next generation solutions such as CyberTap, Digital Reasoning, and others pushing the envelope of findability technology.
High Quality Research Surrounding Enterprise Search
November 13, 2012
Enterprise search requires companies to tap into their internal knowledge, and it has to be done in a way that makes the process quick and accessible for users. Some high-quality research is being done surrounding the capabilities and necessary features of search applications.
Research article “Designing for Enterprise Search in a Global Organization,” authored by the growing search consultancy Findwise, focuses on design concepts surrounding the company’s attempt at a search application. The company’s goal was to create a search application that provides quick access to all internal information, help users find and discover information, and create possibilities for collaboration.
The second attempt at an application focused on simplicity and design:
“The result was an application that seemed very simple at first glance, but still included all the different functionality needed in order to fulfill the information needs of the organization’s different user groups. The new design was evaluated through usage test and though it included the same functionality as the old search application the results were completely different. Users found it not only easier to use but also easy to discover new information.”
Intrafind was based upon open source technology that was developed in a similar fashion. The advantage, of course, lies in age and wisdom after years of business with well-qualified leadership such as that provided by the Director of Research at Intrafind, Christoph Goller. Goller’s experience in artificial intelligence research, as well as machine learning and neural networks, carry over into his work in scalable information retrieval and search-based applications at Intrafind.
Andrea Hayden, November 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Information Delivery Experts Tackle Big Data Beast
November 13, 2012
Connecting the dots of big data can become an arduous or easy task for a company depending on the software and consulting expertise they select. Luckily, every software company is discussing the subject and their technologies as these solutions relate to it. A recent post from enterprise software vendor Chilliad explains how to extract meaning from big data using their software in “Big Data or Big Noise.”
The Iterative Discovery process is utilized and it starts with the user interface and continues through the flexible workflow. Scalability is another hallmark of Chilliad’s software.
The article describes the motivation behind the technology:
Our experience in dealing with Big Data is we don’t know what we are looking for; we don’t know where to find it and we don’t want to have to figure that out. In fact, reading is not the next thing I want to do, reading is the last thing I want to do. That is why we approach Big Data as an exploration and provide software that supports an approach we call Iterative Discovery. Iterative Discovery is exactly what it sounds like — I start with a hunch or hypothesis that I wish to validate and that requires exploration and iteration through massive amounts of data.
Chilliad is making a solid effort in the big data sphere and we expect to see even more vendors offer up technologies in the way of tackling this beast. Additionally, others such as PolySpot have been making waves in this area for quite some time now as information delivery experts.
Megan Feil, November 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Monitor in Austria Adds Mindbreeze InSite for Improved Web Site Search
November 13, 2012
monitor.at is Austria’s IT guide for small and medium sized businesses, whether looking to stay in the loop on IT happenings or advance their business with more efficient and effective usage of information technology. The company recently added a new feature to their Web site: Mindbreeze InSite. Details of monitor.at’s usage of InSite can be read in, “monitor.at uses Mindbreeze InSite.” The new feature is explained:
With just one search inquiry website visitors receive all relevant information from the site, clearly structured using search tabs. Results can be further refined using facets so that the right information can be found in a matter of seconds.
The content of the page ‘Top-Themen’ (top topics) as well as the associated overview pages are automatically created by InSite – without any manual effort by the web editors. This service is enabled by Mindbreeze’s information pairing technology.
In addition, pre-defined search queries set the parameters for the content. This means that Mindbreeze is constantly checking contents and updates the landing pages automatically. A powerful Web site search can help drive traffic to your site and increase the number of revisits to your pages. InSite is a fast and intuitive search feature that is powered by information pairing technology. And with no install required, the self-service solution can save you time and resources.
Philip West, November 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
LucidWorks Announces Lucene Revolution 2013
November 13, 2012
LucidWorks continues to invest not only in the open source community, but specifically in training and development surrounding Apache Lucene and Solr. There is no doubt that LucidWorks, as a company, is committed to the open source community. One of their recurring commitments is the Lucene Revolution conference. The 2013 date has been released and full details are available in, “LucidWorks Announces Lucene Revolution 2013.”
The release begins:
“LucidWorks, the trusted name in Search, Discovery and Analytics, today announced that Lucene Revolution 2013 will take place at The Westin San Diego on April 29 – May 2, 2013. Many of the brightest minds in open source search will convene at this 4th annual Lucene Revolution to discuss topics and trends driving the next generation of search. The conference will be preceded by two days of Apache Lucene, Solr and Big Data training.”
For developers who use Lucene or Solr, or are interested in how LucidWorks products could ease their in-house developer burden, this conference is not to be missed. Of particular interest may be the pre-conference Big Data training, as LucidWorks Big Data is a growing leader in that area.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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