Leadership Changes at LucidWorks
March 11, 2013
A big announcement in enterprise search hit the news ticker today. LucidWorks, a longtime leader in open source enterprise, is expanding its leadership to meet demand. PR Newswire picks up the headline in its press release, “LucidWorks Promotes Grant Ingersoll to CTO; Appoints Stephen Tsuchiyama as SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services.”
The announcement begins:
“LucidWorks, the company transforming the way people access information, today announced the promotion of search and machine learning expert Grant Ingersoll from Chief Scientist to Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and the appointment of Stephen Tsuchiyama as senior vice president of worldwide sales and services. These changes follow a series of management team additions over the past year that reinforce the company’s commitment to deliver the most advanced platform for developing search-enabled applications.”
Stephen Tsuchiyama comes from Niyte Software as VP and General Manager. His sales experience will provide a powerful compliment to Paul Doscher’s continuing leadership as CEO and Ingersoll’s defining creativity. It is exciting to see a leading company get a boost in manpower, but enterprise search followers should also note the expansion as an indication of the rapid growth of the open source enterprise search market.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 11, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Oracle and Forrester Trading Jabs
March 11, 2013
The Autonomy and HP feud can step aside for the rift that is growing between Oracle and Forrester. Forrester claimed that Oracle has taken a step in strategic development with the release of its Fusion Applications. Readwrite reports on the argument in “Who’s Right In The Oracle-Forrester Slugfest?” Many of Oracle’s clients do not want to switch to the new applications. In response, Oracle issues a three-page report that stated Forrester did not talk to all of its clients, only a random smattering. Forrester said it contacted 180 clients and the back and forth continues. Forrester found that 65% of Oracle’s clients would remain with the older applications and it makes sense that clients would remain with applications they are familiar.
“Forrester also said that customers staying with the older applications were missing out on innovation. Again Oracle cried foul, saying that at Oracle OpenWorld last year, the company discussed future releases for E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft, as well as roadmaps for all its applications. Examples of innovation include iPad certification in PeopleSoft and new mobile capabilities in Siebel, Oracle said.”
Forrester is sticking to its guns and stands by its opinions. It sounds more like a squabble between children than professional businesses. The consultants are picking fights in the sandbox and mixing up the rules of the playground.
Whitney Grace, March 11, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Do Not Try To Keep Up With Twitter
March 11, 2013
Real-time tools are used to record information that corresponds directly to actual life. One of the best examples of real-time information is the social networking tool Twitter. CNET wrote an article about Twitter’s time fallacy, “Time Calculator Shows Futility In Trying To Keep Up With Twitter.” The article mentions that in small doses, Twitter is a great tool to keep updated on information, but if can make someone instance trying to follow it all the time. If you feel like life is passing you by if you cannot keep up with tweets, then web developer Koobazaur created the Tweetulator. The Tweetutular calculates how much time you would need to read every single tweet on your feed.
You input the number of people you follow, reading speed, and number of tweets you read a day. For example Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey would need fourteen hours each day to keep up with the 1330 people he follows.
“The Tweetulator results aren’t really that surprising, but it does manage to put Twitter time into perspective. Let’s just say that if I miss a few tweets here and there, I’m not going to feel bad about it.”
Let us say there is more to life than Twitter and time can be better spent developing new enterprise search strategies.
Whitney Grace, March 11, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Librarian Sued Over Blog Posts
March 11, 2013
Would you like to see another example about how blog posts can nip you in the rear? Over at Slashdot, a user posted “Publisher Sues University Librarian Over His Personal Blog Posts.” The post is simply about librarian Dale Askey expressing his opinion:
“’The Chronicle of Higher Education has the news that Herbert Richardson, founder of Edwin Mellen Press is suing McMaster University and University Librarian Dale Askey for $3 Million over Mr. Askey’s posts on a personal blog. In 2010 Mr. Askey wrote a blog post about Edwin Mellen Press on his personal Web site, Bibliobrary. Mr. Askey referred to the publisher as ‘dubious’ and said its books were often works of ‘second-class scholarship.’ For a few months afterward, several people chimed in the blog’s comments section, some agreeing with Mr. Askey, others arguing in support of the publisher. In a February 11 statement, the McMaster University Faculty Association (MUFA) stated that The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) ‘and the MUFA Executive agree that this case represents a serious threat to the freedom of academic librarians (pdf) to voice their professional judgment and to academic freedom more generally.'”
It does not appear that Askey did anything wrong other than post a critical review. If you read the entire article, the Richardson also claims that Askey made defamatory comments about his person. When is a person not allowed to voice an opinion. If movie executives and authors were afraid of every bad review we would not have any new movies or books. The same applies here. Whatever happened to freedom of speech?
Whitney Grace, March 11, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
InetSoft Adds More Features
March 10, 2013
What’s the optimal way to enhance business intelligence software? InetSoft’s Style Intelligence provides an answer. The company rolled out collaborative business intelligence. The marketing catchphrase means annotations, shared bookmarks, and search.
Search? Yes, InetSoft is emerging as a vendor of enterprise search BI style. The question which I had is, “Wasn’t business intelligence a search operation before?” The difference between some of the visions of search experts at defunct companies like Convera and Entopia was to answer a user’s questions.
Have vendors come full circle? Are content processing and analytics companies returning to their roots? InetSoft was founded in 1996.
Stephen E Arnold, March 10, 2013
Google Gets the Flu
March 10, 2013
Google is an all-knowing Internet well-spring of knowledge. Within a few keystrokes and mouse clicks, nearly all the world’s information is at your fingertips. Or maybe not. If you have been browsing the Slashdot forums you might have spied this post called “When Google Got Flu Wrong:”
“When influenza hit early and hard in the United States this year, it quietly claimed an unacknowledged victim: one of the cutting-edge techniques being used to monitor the outbreak. A comparison with traditional surveillance data showed that Google Flu Trends, which estimates prevalence from flu-related Internet searches, had drastically overestimated peak flu levels. The glitch is no more than a temporary setback for a promising strategy, experts say, and Google is sure to refine its algorithms. But with flu-tracking techniques based on mining of web data and on social media taking off, Nature looks at how these potentially cheaper, faster methods measure up against traditional epidemiological surveillance networks.”
The real treat comes from the conversation threads. The comments want to know where Google extrapolated its data from and many believe Google will do better next time. One prominent point made was the “Chicken Little pandemic;” the US is a culture of fear and the only way to get people to comply is instilling fear about a falling sky. The end point is that Google is not always right and comments do not show the best side of humanity.
Whitney Grace, March 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Oracle Unhappy With Forrester Research
March 9, 2013
Forrester Research made a suggestion that Oracle’s customers will not be interested in upgrading to the new Fusion Applications after the long, expensive development process. Computer World hashes out the debate in, “Oracle Blasts Forrester Report On Fusion Applications Adoption.” Forrester claims that Oracle faces a strategic dilemma, because it makes a lot of money from its older product lines and not many clients have adopted Fusion. Oracle defended itself by saying its clients do not have to choose between Oracle Applications Unlimited and Fusion Applications. Oracle has taken a co-existence approach, where the old can be used alongside the new.
Still, why fix what’s not broke?
“’In a sense, Oracle’s Applications Unlimited policy has been too successful,’ said analyst Frank Scavo, president of IT consulting firm Strativa. ‘The majority of Oracle’s existing customers are so satisfied with their current systems that they do not see a driving need to upgrade to Fusion.’”
Another problem is trying to get people to change their enterprise applications. People do not want to upgrade even if the vendor stops providing support. Oracle created too good of a product. A showdown is going to come down between the old and the new, brother fighting brother…er…software fighting software.
Whitney Grace, March 09, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
A 60 Second Snapshot: Cebit 2013 Search
March 8, 2013
Just got off a wonderful flight from Hannover, Germany. You can check out a 60 second snapshot of the search challenges I addressed in my invited lecture. Click here for the YouTube video. An audio abstract of the talk is available as well. Click here for the MP3.
Stephen E Arnold, March 9, 2013
LucidWorks Interviews Update
March 8, 2013
We had a report of Lucid Imagination and LucidWorks links on an index page not resolving on an index page. If you are looking for these interviews, here’s a snapshot of the interviews we have conducted since 2009 with LucidWorks’ professionals.
Mark Bennett
LucidWorks, March 4, 2013
Miles Kehoe
LucidWorks, January 29, 2013
Paul Doscher
LucidWorks, April 16, 2012
Brian Pinkerton
LucidWorks, December 21, 2010
Marc Krellenstein
Lucid Imagination, March 17, 2009
Remember. LucidWorks is the new name for Lucid Imagination.
Tony Safina, March 8, 2013
Hadoop Attempts to Secure Big Data
March 8, 2013
Hadoop creates lots of headlines with its open source framework that can handle data-intensive distributed applications. Many recent headlines have focused on the fact that by adding Hadoop to their framework, many solutions can improve their security. TechCrunch addresses the issue in its article, “Intel Launches Hadoop Distribution And Project Rhino, An Effort To Bring Better Security To Big Data.”
The article begins:
“Intel has launched its own Hadoop distribution, entering an already crowded market of major players all looking to get a piece of the big data pie. The company also announced an open-source effort to enhance security in Hadoop. Earlier this week, EMC and HP each announced its own Hadoop distribution. But for Intel, the challenge is to fortify its market-leading position in the data center, where it will face increasing challenge from an emerging ARM ecosystem.”
While Big Data is in many ways a new issue and is therefore demanding new technology, security does not have to be an issue at every turn. For instance, there are solutions built by industry-leading companies that have a strong record of security as well as support and training. LucidWorks is one of them and is definitely worth a second look.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 8, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
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