Ventana Benchmark Research: A Mistake and a Correction
April 2, 2013
Inadvertently by me or as a result of the same clever teens who hacked our Twitter account, a story about Ventana Research appeared which was not edited for actual release. To set the record straight, I want to quote from the Ventana news release and apologize for this unfortunate error. The item which caught our attention focused on research conducted by Ventana.
You will want to check out “Ventana Research Commences New Benchmark Research on Information Optimization.” Here’s the core of the announcement:
Ventana Research announced today that the firm is set to begin their latest Benchmark Research on Information Optimization. The firm has embarked on this benchmark research to evaluate how technology is used to support better access and utilization of information in business and IT. Information optimization is also a key driver and benefit of the use of big data technology. Information powers today’s businesses, and previous research conducted by Ventana Research indicates that organizations are aware of the challenges associated with accessing and assembling information so that it is useful and relevant. This new research on Information optimization, the latest from the leading business technology research firm, will analyze how organizations collect data, in what forms they collect it, how it is assemble and integrated and how it is best used. The research is designed to provide the building blocks for a foundation for optimizing the use and integration of information, enabling Ventana Research to provide guidance on efficiently and effectively using technology to deliver the right information to business and IT when and how it is needed. This research will also examine organizations’ people, process, information and technology competencies, maturity, trends and best practices in how they make information available to those who need it. The research aims to provide significant new insights into attitudes toward information optimization and the processes they enable. It will help provide information on best practices and practical methods to build a business case for investment. The research will also investigate the most critical information sources and how organizations provide access that critical information to decision makers in the form and cycles they need it.
For more information about Ventana, navigate to http://www.ventanaresearch.com/.
Sorry for the confusion caused by either an error made by me, one of my team, or the folks who seem to find Beyond Search worthy of spoofing. If you have a comment, feel free to use the Comments section of the blog.
Stephen E Arnold, April 2, 2013
Sponsored by Augmentext
Lucene Solr Revolution Lives up to the Name
April 2, 2013
The upcoming Lucene/Solr Revolution Conference is highly anticipated by open source devotees. Sponsored by LucidWorks, the spring conference will focus on interactive experiences with developers and IT leaders. Market Watch gives the full details in their story, “Lucene/Solr Revolution Catalyzes Open Source Search Industry.”
The article begins:
“LucidWorks, the company transforming the way people access information, today announced that leaders from Linkedin, bitly and the Lucene/Solr Project Management Committee (PMC) will keynote the sixth annual Lucene/Solr Revolution Conference. The event will take place April 29 – May 2, 2013 at The Westin in San Diego, California. As the world’s largest gathering of Lucene/Solr innovators, the conference helps set the agenda for breakthrough uses of search. Unprecedented attendance is anticipated, reflecting the ever-accelerating adoption of Lucene/Solr. “
LucidWorks offers LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data, both built on the power of Lucene and Solr. By capitalizing on open source infrastructure, LucidWorks can provide agile and cost effective solutions. In addition to sponsoring professional development opportunities such as this conference, LucidWorks also employees one quarter of the committers on the Lucene/Solr development project. Their commitment to the future of open source is sincere and longstanding.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 2, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Sword Group and TEMIS Partner
April 2, 2013
TEMIS has already built its reputation as one of the leading providers of Semantic Content Enrichment for Enterprise as well as the SWORD Group and they recently announced a partnership. The Tag Line article “Sword Group Partners with TEMIS to Democratize the Semantic Enrichment in the Business” which was translated using Google talks about the new budding relationship. SWORD Group is now considered a certified “Gold Partner” and now uses the TEXIS Luxid platform.
“Luxid Content Enrichment Platform is a platform for robust semantic enrichment of content, which extracts the relevant business information contained in unstructured documents, and rich metadata. Revealing facets of business information assets, it helps to optimize the management and archiving, dissemination within portals, as well as analysis.”
SWORD Group is a consulting group and they focus on assisting their clients with managing information, analysis and classification. Their technology helps to extract, transform, enrich and also publish information and their Gold Partner collaboration with TEMIS they will be able to obtain a deep knowledge of Luxid and more importantly its uses. Philippe Le Calve, Chief Executive Officer SWORD France made the following statement.
“The signing of this partnership between Gold and TEMIS SWORD follows several years of working on our projects. Good value and robust in natural language processing, TEMIS is a natural ally essential to its strategy SWORD valuation information. Luxid ® platform is a key technology pillars that support the semantic solutions designed by SWORD.”
Luxid aims to be easily integrated into a variety of content management systems and can be connected to a number of different solutions including Microsoft SharePoint Solutions, EMC Documentum and MarkLogic. TEMIS definitely has worked its charm on SWORD looks like they got a good thing going.
April Holmes, April 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Recorded Future Sheds Light on Sony
April 2, 2013
One of the best ways to find the correlation between data from various sources it by comparison. Recorded Future is an online business intelligence analysis tool designed for open web sources. Recorded future scans thousands of different type such as blogs and online news and analyzes the text to identify certain references entities or events. The GamaGanda article “Analyzing Sony with Recorded Future #2” is a great example of how the intelligence tool works. The author does an analysis on Sony’s position in the video gaming market. Recently, Sony had been discussing innovation and was due to make a big announcement. The author used Recorded Future to see if Sony was really making any innovative strides and more specifically how they shaped up when compared to Microsoft and Apple.
“Patent filling is something you can track and it gives you a pretty good idea on a company’s disposition to invest in R&D and hence design innovative products and services.”
As shown on the online screen shots Sony is definitely not keeping up with the innovative minds of Microsoft and Apple and the number of patents clearly demonstrate that. Also more alarming is that Sony has seen an increasing number of layoffs over the past several years. Though patent filing seems to be increasing they are still behind the other big two and have lost a lot of ground in the race. Only time will tell if the upcoming announcement and future projects will help Sony to bounce back. With just a few screenshots Recorded Future broke the bad news to Sony shareholders and now all they can do is watch, wait and hope for the best.
April Holmes, April 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Actian and Big Data Get Fast Answers
April 2, 2013
Actian is already a leader when it comes to big data management thanks to its analytics database Vectorwise Action Apps and it seems that they are focused on making a good thing even better. The Fort Mills Times article “Actian Announces Availability of Vectorwise 3.0 for Getting Fast Answers from Big Data” talks about Actian Corp and the introduction of its new Vectorwise 3.0 analytics database with advanced Hadoop integration. The Vectorwise 3.0 analytic database allows companies to integrate Hadoop using the Vectorwise Hadoop Connector and it helps companies to get important business information form their big data quickly and with ease. Fred Gallagher, general manger of Vectorwise stated
“We are talking about moving data at a rate of up to 3 Terabytes per hour onto a modest x86 server costing less than $15,000. That’s like downloading 20 movies in two minutes. Vectorwise 3.0 is now even faster, with a more efficient storage engine, supporting more data types and analytical SQL functions, and enhanced DDL features. It also has improved monitoring and profiling accessibility.”
Many companies rely highly on data to shape their business and Actian studied companies Hadoop usage to develop the innovative Vectorwise 3.0 analytics database. In the past Hadoop data stores were slow when it came to batch processing of analytics but the Vectorwise Hadoop Connector helps to alleviate this problem by delivering not only timely but also responsive multi-user querying and analytics processing. Industry users are already expressing their eagerness for the Hadoop Connector’s release in April 2013 and more importantly its positive impact on data analytics. As Hadoop integration and the benefits continue to make the news it looks like Hadoop’s got the data game down packed.
April Holmes, April 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Ghost Sites Generate Traffic But Not Much Else
April 1, 2013
Due to a low rate of turnover and clickthroughs and the often unreliable world of ad exchange and technology that promises sky high viewership that they just can not deliver on, the rise of digital tricksters is at an all time high.
You’ve heard of a ghost writer, well, “Meet the Most Suspect Publishers On the Web: The Rise of Ghost Sites, Where Traffic is Huge but People are Few.”
“Increasingly, digital agencies and buy-side technology firms are seeing massive traffic and audience spikes from groups of Web publishers few people have ever heard of. These sites—billed as legitimate media properties—are built to look authentic on the surface, with generic, nonalarm-sounding content. But after digging deeper, it becomes evident that very little of these sites’ audiences are real people. Yet big name advertisers are spending millions trying to reach engaged users on these properties.”
That is right, companies like DigiMogul and Alphabird are getting advertisers to pay to leave an impression on a viewer that may or may not exist. The problem with this is you get pretty lousy search results due to the lack of actual humans hitting and working on the site. But with bots driving up traffic, those big names like BMW, Pillsbury, and JetBlue are clamoring to throw their money at the company in an effort to reach “consumers.”
Sounds a little backward to us.
Leslie Radcliff, April 3, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
XTIVIA Sponsors Gartner Portals
April 1, 2013
The Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit 2013, is just around the corner. Taking place in San Diego, this year’s theme is “Engage at the Nexus of Social, Mobile, Information and Cloud.” PR.com offers the full press release in, “XTIVIA, Inc. is a Proud Silver Sponsor of the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit 2013.”
The release begins:
“XTIVIA, Inc., a Liferay Platinum Partner and the 2012 Liferay North America Partner of the Year, is a proud Silver Sponsor of the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit 2013, Booth 411, taking place in San Diego, CA on April 29 – May 1, 2013. XTIVIA has been providing content management, collaboration, and web portal solutions to its customers for over a decade, leveraging best-of-breed products and technologies. XTIVIA has been working with Liferay Portal since 2006.”
Liferay Portal has been making headlines lately for their innovation and collaboration efforts. However, some users just need a simple out-of-the-box solution to get their immediate enterprise needs in order. For those organizations, LucidWorks might offer a strong option. Ready to go without lengthy customization or implementation, LucidWorks is still highly customizable. Perhaps most importantly, LucidWorks backs up their offerings with top-notch customer support and training.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 1, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Taxonomy or Ontology
April 1, 2013
The WAND blog article “Common Taxonomy Questions: What is the difference between a Taxonomy and an Ontology?” attempts to clear up the misconception between taxonomy and ontology. The article details that these are two common words in the information management world but many people do not truly understand the difference.
“Taxonomy is a collection of terms that are connected by broader term, narrower term, related term, and synonym relationships.”
The article makes an interesting comparison. Taxonomy is a tree that has a parent/child relationship with terms and it usually covers a specific subject area. Taxonomies can be a valuable tool when adding structure/content to unstructured information, which makes the information more easily searchable. Multiple taxonomies can be used together as filters to help make the search experience more powerful and exact. Popular sites such as Amazon and Costco use this tool on their sites. When it comes to ontologies the author makes an interesting comparison.
“Ontologies can be thought of more like a web, with many different types of relationships between all concepts. Ontologies can have infinite number of relationships between concepts and it is easier to create relationships between concepts across different subject domains.”
Ontologies are handy for those who want a more sophisticated information model that could be valuable when doing advanced natural language processing or text analytics. Though the name of the system is WAND Product and Service Taxonomy believe it or not it is also an ontology. The blog provides a good distinction between ontology and taxonomy but then says that the WAND system is actually both, which makes one wonder how do you really distinguish the two. Looks like more questions than answers. Here we go again.
April Holmes, April 01, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
A Cause for Celebration
April 1, 2013
The best way to celebrate the successful completion of a project is with a celebration and no celebration is complete without a cake. Synaptica definitely knows how to throw a celebration party. According to the Synaptica Central piece “Elsevier Celebrates New Installation” Synaptica and Elsevier recently celebrated the successful completion of their software development project with a tasty cake.
“It is a pleasure when one of our customers has a specially decorated cake made to celebrate the successful deployment of their customized Synaptica taxonomy management software. The project, completed this month, was a collaboration between Synaptica and the content management team at Elsevier, Netherlands.”
Elsevier got its start with journal and book publishing but is also known for providing scientific, technical and medical information as well as various other products. Synaptica was started in 1995 and is owned by Trish Yancey and Dave Clarke. They are an industry leader in the taxonomy management and ontology software. Their software give users several key benefits such as increased relevance thanks to a synonym-rich indexing vocabulary and the ability to visualize taxonomies in a variety of both textual and graphical formats. Synaptica software can work in the enterprise world and has been integrated with several different third-party applications. In addition Synaptica is user friendly and can be set up in only a matter of minutes. Synaptica taxonomy software is used by a variety of organizations when it comes to their metadata management and information access applications. The company even received the “100 Companies that Matter” award. Looks like they definitely have a reason to celebrate.
April Holmes, April 01, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Soutron and EBSCO Join Forces
April 1, 2013
Could the library be a gold mind just waiting to be tapped for its financial resources? The Examiner article “Soutron and EBSCO Enter Partnership Agreement” talks about the technology partnership that Soutron Global and EBSCO forged. With this new partnership Soutron Global will begin to integrate EBSCO Discovery Services with Soutron’s Library and Knowledge Management system. This collaboration will provide clients with a single integrated search environment that they can use for research and information resources. Tony Saadat, President and CEO of Soutron Global made the following statement.
“This partnership means that libraries, knowledge management centers, and information resource portals can ensure optimal access to knowledge assets, physical resources, and digital resources, thus ensuring optimal exploitation of resources.”
EBSCO Publishing is the company behind EBSCOhost, which is a fee-based online research service. A variety of libraries including educational, medical and public use EBSCO services. EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) provides better indexing and full-text searching than any other discovery service. Graham Beastall, Managing Director, UK hade the following to say regarding the collaboration.
“Soutron is very excited to be working with EBSCO on what we regard as a key initiative to develop access to digital and physical resources in an organization. It will allow us to offer customers using Soutron additional opportunities to maximize use of their collection through EDS single search indexing technologies. Our goal is to make life easier for end users and for library managers.”
Never really thought of library catalogs as a way to financial security but could they be the next technology gold mind. Looking at the big picture I think the answer is no. Most libraries already work on a limited budget and it’s unlikely that they will suddenly get additional funds. With their proven technology EBSCO should focus on acquiring library cataloging and services companies for an extra boost. “Might as well be all or nothing.”
April Holmes, April 01, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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