Enterprise Search Ignorance Can Be Costly
May 20, 2013
Why What You Do Not Can Bite Your Pocketbook. Marketers Have Their Interests Front and Center, Not the Customers’ Interests
A few days ago, I sat through several presentations about enterprise search. The systems struck me as quite similar. The emphasis was placed on providing basic information access to users. For the purpose of this short essay, I will not make distinctions among search vendors which position themselves as providers of analytics, business intelligence, discovery, and Big Data access, among other synonyms for search and information retrieval.
The missing pieces of the cost puzzle can make budget deficits a reality. A happy quack to Vermont’s Department of Information and Innovation. See the discussion to drive down the cost of doing business. States are paragons of fiscal probity.
However, the talks caused me to reflect on what the vendors left out of their presentations.
Here’s a checklist of the omissions in commercial systems which are now being marketed as an alternative to the high profile and expensive solutions available from Dassault, Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, Microsoft, and Oracle, Each of these large enterprise software vendors acquired one or more search systems. Each has taken steps to integrate search with other enterprise software solutions.
The gap the acquisition of such companies as Autonomy, Exalead, and others is now left to smaller and less well know vendors of search. I don’t want to mention these companies by name, but a quick search of Bing or Google will surface many of the firms vying to become the next $100 million vendor of enterprise search systems.
The first omission is a component which can acquire, normalize, and present textual content in a form the search system can process. For newcomers to enterprise search, the content acquisition process can add significantly to the cost of deploying an enterprise search system. Connectors are available from a number of specialist vendors. Most of the search vendors provide some basic tools for acquiring content. Depending on the organization, the vendor provided tools may be adequate for acquiring documents in text or Web pages in HTML. Other document types may be more problematic. A vendor offering a system which requires documents to be in a supported XML format often emphasizes the system’s ability to slice, dice, parse, and perform certain operations with alacrity. What’s omitted is the time, cost, technical expertise, and work flows required to get content into the search system. Cloud based enterprise search solutions and certain lower cost enterprise search systems leave content to the licensee or offer for fee consulting services to assist with these often complex activities.
Lucene Solr Revolution 2013 a Success
May 20, 2013
Lucene/Solr Revolution is an annual conference that users and developers look to as the premier training and networking opportunity for Apache Lucene/Solr. The 2013 conference just concluded amid immense success. The Wall Street Journal covers the highlights of the successful event in the news story, “Lucene/Solr Revolution 2013 in San Diego Fosters Continued Innovation Within the Lucene/Solr Open Source Search Community.”
The story begins:
“LucidWorks, the company transforming the way people access information, today shared highlights of Lucene/Solr Revolution 2013, which took place April 29 – May 2, 2013 at The Westin San Diego. More than 400 attendees, including many of the brightest minds in open source search, participated in the fourth annual Lucene/Solr Revolution, discussing topics and trends driving the next generation of search. The conference was preceded by two days of Apache Lucene, Solr and Big Data training.“
Amid the highlights were keynotes presentations by experts, 40 expert talks from around the industry, case studies from all areas of the economy, and sold-out training workshops. LucidWorks continues to set the standard for support, training, and creativity in open source software. Their capstone event, Lucene Revolution, is the perfect example of how LucidWorks is committed to developers and users, continuing to invest in the open source infrastructure.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Google Implants Not Far Away
May 20, 2013
From Marketplace Tech comes an interesting article on Google Glass and the projections into the future in regards to similar projects. The article, “Google’s Ray Kurzweil on the Computers that will Live in our Brains,” discusses how everything Google puts its hands on is changing how we search, retrieve and interact with information. As in nearly all articles these days discussing Google Glass Ray Kurzweil, the director of engineering at Google, leads the conversation.
Kurzweil posits that we will eventually move beyond devices that simply allow us to look at the world through a keyhole. Instead, he forecasts that people will be online all the time. He projects that devices post-Glass will ultimately be the size of blood cells able to be sent inside the brain and connect to the cloud around the mid-2030’s.
The article tells us more:
“In Kurzweil’s vision, these advances don’t simply bring computers closer to our biological systems. Machines become more like us. ‘Your personality, your skills are contained in information in your neocortex, and it is information,’ Kurzweil says. ‘These technologies will be a million times more powerful in 20 years and we will be able to manipulate the information inside your brain.’ As that data locked up inside our brain becomes searchable, inimitable human qualities suddenly become easier to emulate. Kurzweil denies that the searching and backup up of the brain itself is a bloodless pursuit, depleted of human emotion.”
Artificial intelligence and the melding of biology and machine is increasingly discussed in the media in reference to Google Glass. Will Glass evolve to Google impants? The bigger question is touched upon in this particular article: is it altruistic intentions or advertising that is driving this kind of technology?
Megan Feil, May 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Forget SEO Say Hello to AdWords
May 20, 2013
SEO is a hot topic as it is necessary for any marketing and PR plan to take shape. Unfortunately, Search Engine Watch reports that many are taken advantage of by SEO companies. Their recent post, “Moving Forward With a Broken Compass: A Plea to SEOs,” goes as far to say that what these companies deliver is borderline criminal.
The writer of this particular post establishes his ethos at the other end of the spectrum of quality of work delivered. The author describes a time where he went to attend a regular meeting at his client’s conference room but mentions that he never saw past that front conference room.
However, one day was different:
“I was surprised when the client offered to take us for a tour of their entire facility to have us meet the people we had been actually been working for. The client took my co-workers and I around their office complex and warehouses. They introduced us to people we had never before met, stating things like ‘This is Bob from Company X. They didn’t have a job before the work you’ve done for us. We built Bob’s office and the warehouse for his company off the back of what you’ve been doing.’”
Whether SEO delivers what it promises or not, this is beside the point. If you want traffic, buy AdWords.
Megan Feil, May 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Implications of the Increase in YouTube Videos
May 20, 2013
It is interesting to think about the idea that there are “6 Billion Hours of Video Watched on YouTube Each Month” and the site was only launched in 2005. Not only are 6 billion hours of video watched each month but that is 50 percent more than last year. Plus, now they are getting more than 1 billion unique visitors every month.
Consequently, content is incredibly more diverse and the audience of YouTube is equally more diverse than when the site launched 8 years ago. YouTube has identified the audience that marketers want to reach and they are not an age group as the name implies: Generation C.
This describes who this group is and why they are important:
Gen C is a powerful new force in consumer culture. It’s a term YouTube uses to describe people who care deeply about creation, curation, connection, and community. It’s not an age group; it’s an attitude and mindset defined by key characteristics. About 80 percent of Gen C is made up of millennials, YouTube’s core (though by no means only) audience. At Think Insights, there is some interesting new data on Gen C. For example, Gen C influences more than $500 billion in annual consumer spending in the U.S. alone.
While Generation C does not sync up to a particular age group, Nielsen has shown that YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18-34 than any cable network. There is little doubt that advertising will follow their audience as it has done in the past. There is uncertainty about reading — is the future of reading watching videos?
Megan Feil, May 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Google: An Island or a Digital Monaco?
May 19, 2013
After several days of rehash about search, I am running out of energy for topics related to information retrieval. Hello, hello, search today is not much better than it was five years ago. In fact, when it comes to locating high value information, I think we are now regressing.
I took a moment to read “Welcome to Google Island.” It’s a Condé Nate thing. I am okay with trendy writing, but at age 69 I think a trend is a Silent 700 terminal with a fresh roll of thermal paper. There you go, young folks.
The main point of the write up is that Wired found the Google conference in mid May 2013 sort of disconnected from the mainland. I ignored the utopia stuff and I shudder when me too companies do the innovation thing.
Here’s a passage which I marked with my trust yellow highlighter:
“Governments are too focused on democracy and rule of law. On Google Island, we’ve found those things to be distractions. If democracy worked so well, if a majority public opinion made something right, we would still have Jim Crow laws and Google Reader. We believe we can fix the world’s problems with better math. We can tear down the old and rebuild it with the new. Imagine Minecraft. Now imagine it photorealistic, and now imagine yourself living there, or at least, your Google Being living there. We already have the information. All we need is an invitation. This is the inevitable and logical end point of Google Island: a new Google Earth.” And I realized I believed him. I believed in him, even. Sure, he’s a weird guy living in his own world. But what vision! And I wanted Google to make my world look like its own. And I wanted to give it all my information, about everything in my life, even my most private shameful thoughts. I put the glasses back on, and took off my pants. We stood, naked, before each other with no secrets, no rules, and no shame. And I knew I never wanted to leave Google Island. Even if I could.
I assume that the write up is Swiftian, but with Condé Nast one never really knows.
Several thoughts:
First, we are returning to the walled garden view of technology. Sure, there’s lots of talk about open, but big companies are gunning for lock in.
Second, when outfits operate with sweeping visions, some of the faithful may not follow along. Even cults experience some attrition.
Third, Google is embroiled in a dispute with England over taxes. The fix may be to set up a summit between England’s prime minister and Google’s chairman.
Net net: Google is not an island. Google may be operating more in the Luxembourg or Monaco mode. The prince, I believe, is a strong advocate of the blue fin tuna. And Luxembourg is really into money.
I am not sure the island metaphor is the right one.
Stephen E Arnold, May 19, 2013
Sponsored by Augmentext
Connecting the Dots Yields Spotty Results
May 19, 2013
In the aftermath of the Boston bombing, many have discussed whether or not the FBI should have had the capabilities to “connect the dots” to identify and prevent the bomber from following through. Boing Boing reiterates the point that Bruce Schneier made in a recent CNN op-ed in their post, “Why ‘Connecting the Dots’ is the Wrong Way to Think about Stopping Terrorism.”
It goes back to the old adage: hindsight is 20/20. It takes a future perspective to look at an event and create a narrative amongst dots of data. The concept of the “narrative fallacy” is what makes a past event seem like a neat story where the dots to be connected should have been obviously illuminated the entire time.
The article tells us:
“Rather than thinking of intelligence as a simple connect-the-dots picture, think of it as a million unnumbered pictures superimposed on top of each other. Or a random-dot stereogram. Is it a sailboat, a puppy, two guys with pressure-cooker bombs or just an unintelligible mess of dots? You try to figure it out. It’s not a matter of not enough data, either. Piling more data onto the mix makes it harder, not easier. The best way to think of it is a needle-in-a-haystack problem; the last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through.”
No one can deny that connecting dots is an important way to increase knowledge. However, as good of a technique — and phrase — that it is, spotty results are invariable.
Megan Feil, May 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Google: Quick UK Trip to Explain a Method
May 18, 2013
I just returned from the UK. On my return I saw this news item: “Google’s Schmidt to Meet Britain’s Cameron as Tax Row Rages.” If the link goes dark, just run a query for “Google tax UK” and you will get some of the information. You can watch a video snippet at “Ed Miliband Accuses Google of Avoiding Fair Share of Tax” as of 6 am Eastern, May 18.
I watched a bit of the discussion between a UK elected official and a Googler on the telly before I had a wonderful flight back to the United States. I thought the discussion was one of those technical misunderstandings. I recall a phrase which suggested that Google was not communicating clearly. Wired Magazine, UK edition, ran this story: “MP to Google: You Do Evil When It Comes to Tax.”
As I understand the issue, Google pays what it owes within the boundaries of the regulations. The UK is struggling economically, which is evident in the number of folks who seem to be wandering about Hounslow without much to do at 10 30 am of a morning. My bus ride to Heathrow was an eye opener. The impression I had on the secondary streets to the airport was that High Street Kensington is different from the bus route from Hammersmith to Heathrow.
Wired said:
At a Public Accounts Committee hearing on 16 May, chairperson Margaret Hodges accused Google of “deliberately manipulating the reality of their business” and claimed to have whistleblower evidence that UK Google staff had sold advertising and invoiced UK-based customers. “You are a company that says you do no evil,” she told Google vice-president Matt Brittin. “I think that you do do evil in that you use smoke and mirrors to avoid paying tax.”
My view is that if rules and regulations exist, those rules must be followed. Some people are able to interpret the rules one way. Others see the rules differently. I think Google has its view of what is required, and the UK officials have another view.
If the quick trip by Google’s chairman is going to happen, will Google be able to explain its point of view and carry the day? My hunch is that there may be some further discussion about taxes which will require more than Google Glass to get the elected officials to see the world as Google perceives it.
Apparently millions of pounds are the point of the discussions. In my opinion, some countries do not understand how nation states should react to Google. Countries, in some situations, may be less influential than companies. Annoyed officials may be clinging to an outmoded view of what rules and regulations are supposed to do.
What’s clear is that Google’s comments reported on May 16, 2013, have sparked some phone calls and a possible meeting between the highest levels of the British government.
Quick actions such as buying Motorola and meeting with David Cameron can signal some of the consequences of quick thinking and even quicker actions. In my opinion, some countries and their officials don’t understand the Google systems and methods.
Stephen E Arnold, May 18, 2013
Government IT Professionals Not Ready for Big Data
May 18, 2013
It is not a surprise that 97 percent of state and local IT professional expect their data to grow by more than 50 percent over the next two years. However, more than 75 percent of them are only somewhat or not very familiar with the term big data. These findings are found in a recent report by MeriTalk and GCN did a nice write up on the implications of the study in, “Is Big Data Big Trouble for State, Local Governments?”
A survey of 150 state and local government CIOs and IT managers taken in November and December 2012 comprise the respondents in “The State and Local Big Data Gap.”
The article lists more of the statistics gleaned from the study:
“Seventy-nine percent of responding agencies said it will be at least three years before they are able to take full advantage of big data, even though they see it improving overall efficiency (57 percent); increasing the speed and accuracy of the decision-making process (54 percent); and providing a greater understanding of citizens’ needs (37 percent). And although 79 percent said they were just somewhat or not very familiar with the term, they do report having the kind of problems that big data techniques are intended to solve.”
Are state and local governments able to tap the alleged power of big data? Maybe not yet? That is certainly the conclusions that the numbers speak to.
Megan Feil, May 18, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Users Benefit from MapR Partnership with LucidWorks
May 17, 2013
MapR Technologies, specializing in Hadoop for Big Data, announced a new partnership with LucidWorks to bring full-text search and discovery to the platform. Read all the benefits to customers in the KM World article, “MapR taps LucidWorks for Hadoop.”
The announcement begins:
“MapR Technologies has announced distribution of LucidWorks Search with the MapR Platform for Apache Hadoop. MapR says the move allows customers to perform predictive analytics, full search and discovery, as well as conduct advanced database operations, on a single platform. The MapR/LucidWorks enterprise-class search capability works directly on Hadoop data but can also index and search standard files without having to perform any conversion or transformation.”
LucidWorks is a known leader in full-text search for the enterprise. Their LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data solutions are built on the sturdy open source infrastructure of Apache Lucene/Solr. Partnering with LucidWorks adds functionality to MapR solutions as well as shows a willingness to do what is best for the customer. LucidWorks’ strong track record only adds to MapR’s reputation and legitimacy.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 17, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
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