Interview with CEO as SLI Systems Goes Public
July 3, 2013
SLI Systems is now listed on the New Zealand Exchange. CEO Shaun Ryan shares his thoughts on this and the enterprise search market in this Double Shot Interview that Interest.co.nz has posted to YouTube. In the 17-minute conversation with interviewer Andrew Patterson, Ryan is full of confidence as he shares his thoughts on the future of his company and his industry.
See the interview for more, but here are a few highlights. Ryan acknowledges that his company’s biggest competition is Endeca, who he says is the only company to surpass SLI. They actually found it helpful when Oracle bought Endeca, saying that move opened a “hole in the market.” Interesting.
Customer service is a priority for SLI. Since their business follows a SAS (software-as-a-service) model, customer retention is key, so taking good care of the best ones is “vital,” says Ryan. Besides, the company has gotten some of their best ideas from listening to customer suggestions.
SLI’s decision to go public comes after an average of 30 percent annual growth over last five years. The company considered going the private-venture-capital route, but the best options there would have required a move to the U.S. Though Ryan describes the process of becoming publically listed as difficult (and stresses the importance of a good CFO), he says it was worth it. Patterson asks, How big could the company grow? Ryan responds:
“We see there’s a lot of room for growth in ecommerce. Ecommerce is growing globally, in every country. The U.S. is the world’s largest ecommerce market, but it’s also growing in every country in the world. And you’ll find this, you’re shopping more online, your friends and family are shopping more and more online, that’s just a worldwide phenomenon, so we see there’s a lot of potential. And I’m sure, once you look at it, you’ll notice that search on a lot of websites is really poor, and you’ll sort of get a feel if you go and have a look at a few different websites, you’ll get a feel for how much of a need there is for our sort of services.”
We agree, there is no shortage of retail sites crying for improved search functionality. When asked what SLI hopes to achieve over the next five years, Ryan replies quite sensibly that they hope to continue to grow, pushing into more markets since “the whole world needs better search.” At the moment, SLI serves customers in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil. Next in their sites is Japan, but Ryan emphasizes that they get customer requests from a number of other countries.
The interview concludes with Ryan’s thoughts on cultivating New Zealand’s tech industry. His two suggestion: turn out more qualified computer science graduates (that sounds familiar), and celebrate the success of companies who have done well. That is a category in which SLI Systems is happy to claim membership, and they show no signs of slowing down now.
Cynthia Murrell, July 03, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Report Outlines Global Customer Experience Management Field
July 3, 2013
Now here is an interesting factoid. If this finding is accurate, the customer experience management field is undergoing quite the boom. SBWire points to a recent study from market research firm Research Moz in, “Global Customer Experience Management Market 2012-2016: Latest Industry Research Report.” The report asserts:
“Global Customer Experience Management (CEM) market to grow at a CAGR of 20.79 percent over the period 2012-2016. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increased number of customer touch points. The Global CEM market has also been witnessing a growing demand for mobile analytics. However, integration of multiple communication channels could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.”
The report, Global CEM Market 2012-2016, is the result of a global market-analysis effort in consultation with industry insiders. The press release emphasizes that it also forecasts the CEM landscape over the near future, as well as covering prominent vendors in the field; see the write-up for specifics. The full report can be purchased here.
Cynthia Murrell, July 03, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
LucidWorks Webinar Available on Solr 4
July 3, 2013
Several posts of late have revolved around the news of the Solr 4 release. The open source community is excited and ready to see what this new iteration can do. LucidWorks is a company that builds its value-added search and Big Data products on top of the Apache Lucene Solr platform. They have a genuine vested interest in the Lucene Solr open source community. One of their experts offered a webinar on Solr 4. Read the details in the release, “Webinar: Solr 4, the NoSQL Search Server.”
The summary begins:
“The long awaited Solr 4 release brings a large amount of new functionality that blurs the line between search engines and NoSQL databases. Now you can have your cake and search it too with Atomic updates, Versioning and Optimistic Concurrency, Durability, and Real-time Get! Learn about new Solr NoSQL features and implementation details of how the distributed indexing of Solr Cloud was designed from the ground up to accommodate them.”
The presentation was done by Yonik Seeley, an expert in the field if there ever was one. Seeley created Apache Solr and is a co-founder at LucidWorks. This sort of training from an expert is invaluable and LucidWorks is providing it for free! Do not miss your opportunity to get up to speed on all that Solr 4 has to offer.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 3, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
BBC, Greek Cleverness, and Codes
July 2, 2013
And the award to the best lead paragraph from the BBC since the company underwent investigations for a former comedian’s alleged activities.
According to Herodotus, the Ancient Greek tyrant Histiaeus once used an innovative method to send a secret message: he shaved the head of his most trustworthy slave, had his order for a revolt tattooed on the man’s scalp, then waited for the slave’s hair to grow back before sending him off. The story soured for Histiaeus – he was beheaded by a Persian general – but it bequeathed the world one of the first known examples of an intriguing artform: steganography, the writing of hidden messages.
To read this bit of erudition, navigate to “The Internet’s New Secret Social Codes.” You can figure out yourself if the shift from a tattoo and a couple month delay in delivery time is equivalent to social media info sharing. Heck, I liked the lead. The write up? Well, very BBCish. I miss the chimes still.
Stephen E Arnold, July 2, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky
HP Pairs with Google Apps
July 2, 2013
Google plus HP? Stranger things have happened. All Things D reveals, “HP and Google Team Up to Offer Small Businesses ‘IT in a Box’.” Now a Google Apps reseller, HP will be packaging Googly management tools with computers, printers, and other hardware. Writer Arik Hesseldahl observes:
“It’s the latest move on the chessboard by HP to get a little closer to Google, and it is interesting in light of the fact that Microsoft has both been building its own hardware — the Surface — and also cozying up to HP rival Dell with a $2 billion loan to help finance its $24.4 billion leveraged buyout. The move is also taking place against the backdrop of HP’s further embrace of Android and Chrome-based hardware. It just added a second Chromebook to its line of notebooks, and also offers an Android-based tablet.
“Google is getting something pretty attractive out the deal, too: HP’s considerable relationships in the channel — the network of third-party resellers that offer customized packages of products to businesses.”
Sounds like a sweet deal for both HP and Google. Will the consumer be similarly blessed? Hesseldahl ponders other changes the arrangement could bring. He suspects the team could soon add more HP hardware to the Google Apps bundle, like servers and networking equipment, for a special small-business package. That could be helpful; we’ll just have to wait and see.
Cynthia Murrell, July 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
HPs Big Data Blend
July 2, 2013
HP leverages several analytics acquisitions in one fell swoop, ZDNet reports in, “HP Launches Big Data Platform, Integrates Acquired Analytics Parts.” The company revealed the new platform, HAVEn, at its recent Discover conference in Las Vegas. The write-up states:
“HAVEn combines technologies from HP Autonomy, Vertica, ArcSight and Operations Management along with Hadoop. Most of those parts were acquired by HP in recent years. HP is betting that more than 700 connectors to HAVEn will help customers avoid lock-in via an open architecture. HP also has support for multiple virtualization technologies and optimized hardware. In other words, HP is selling you a big data stack from one vendor with the ability to integrate other analytical tools.
“The first big data effort built on HAVEn is HP Operations Analytics, which is a combination of IT operational data from tools from ArcSight and the company’s business service management products. Third party data sources will also be ingested. HP is rounding out the effort with analytics services.”
It sounds like HAVEn might be more than the sum of its parts; kudos to the company for a strategy well played. HP is giving potential customers a free taste with the Vertica Community Edition, which will analyze one terabyte of data gratis before entreating you to upgrade. It may well be worth checking out.
Cynthia Murrell, July 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
E Know Joins Thomson Reuters Elite Alliance Program
July 2, 2013
I suppose this seems logical in today’s world—a top publisher has embraced law firm management. Ah, diversification! Noodls reports, “Thomson Reuters Elite Announces Alliance Partnership with E-know.net Limited.” Reuter’s Elite division was formed to serve legal- and professional-services firms. About its Alliance Program, the press release tells us:
“The Thomson Reuters Elite Global Strategic Alliance Program provides a one-stop global marketplace that fosters cooperation, streamlines the buy-sell cycle and helps all involved achieve a competitive edge. Elite partners are experienced technology, services and consulting organizations ready to innovate, collaborate and help our clients solve their most pressing business challenges.”
New program member e-know, founded in 1998, now hosts more than 80 applications for its legal clients in its Telford, UK-based data centers. The write-up quotes e-know’s director, Nigel Redwood:
“e-know.net has an unrivalled track record in the UK legal industry, meeting the needs of our clients for more than 12 years. By outsourcing IT to e-know.net, Thomson Reuters Elite clients can focus entirely on managing their businesses. Our secure and flexible IT management is proven to improve organizational performance and ensure business continuity.”
May the new partnership be beneficial to both parties.
Cynthia Murrell, July 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Talend and NEO Technology Advance NoSQL Capabilities
July 2, 2013
In the current open source trend, NoSQL databases are a particularly quick growing sector. Oracle, Cloudant, and Elasticsearch are just a few that continually make the headlines. Now there is another name to add to the list. Read all about the latest news in the article, “Enterprise Open Source: Talend and Neo Technology Advance NoSQL Capabilities with Support for Big Graph Databases.”
The article begins:
“Talend, a global open source software leader, and Neo Technology, creators of Neo4j, the world’s leading graph database, today announced a partnership to advance the deployment and integration of NoSQL graph databases to enterprise environments. As part of the agreement, Talend has added a new connector for Neo4j in its integration solutions, Talend Platform for Big Data and Talend Open Studio for Big Data, enabling users to easily connect and analyze data from disparate systems to help drive and improve business performance.”
The recently announced Solr 4 update adds NoSQL features to the Apache Lucene Solr platform. LucidWorks builds on this open source infrastructure to offer its suite of solutions including LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data. The power of open source lies in its community, which enables affordability and creativity.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 2, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Publishing Consolidation in the Good Old Summertime
July 1, 2013
The world of ink-on-paper publishing no longer makes my heart race. When I was younger and the traditional publishing sector more robust, I did like the thrill of doing the dead-tree thing. I recall the aroma of just-printed annual reports, for example. I look back fondly on days spent at Case-Hoyt in Rochester, New York, where I watched the world’s largest pocket calendar being printed for a very, very wealthy client located in distant climes.
I read on the ABC news site a short item which seems to have originated from the Associated Press. You can dip into the original on the ABC Web site for a short time. The write up asserts that the Hachette Book Group is going to acquire Hyperion. What’s interesting is that Disney, the company which owns some darned interesting information companies, is willing to let content for old people go. Young person content remains in the seven dwarfs’ cabin along with Snow White I believe.
I heard that in the near future a couple of other giant publishing outfits are going to get hitched. Pearson, Bertelsmann, and Random House will doing one of those business gene splicing things. The resulting intellectual protein structure with binding hydrogen atoms will, I assume, lead to soaring revenues, larger profits, and better books and related knowledge outputs.
Smaller publishers may benefit from massive consolidation. I recently purchased a textbook on bioengineering from a company in Singapore which was unfamiliar to me. I was, however, familiar with the price — hundreds of dollars. I assume that high-cost, narrowly-focused print books will continue to sell in the low hundreds.
Will a roll up of niche smaller publishers follow the consolidation of North American and Western European publishing companies? Will new start up print publishing companies gain greater traction in niche markets?
Margins in publishing have been under pressure for years. The cost of paper is an issue. The potential for environmental backlash exists. Traditional books are selling for writing superstars. For less sparkly wordsmiths, sales are less robust.
With Amazon and Apple in the game, it is a fascinating times for traditional publishers. But my heart is beating normally. My hunch is that publishers’ senior management experience a bit of heart flutter when quarterly financials are prepared every 12 weeks.
It is summertime. Beach books sales should be warming in the sun.
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky
New US Chief Technology Officer
July 1, 2013
Short honk: I found “The Most Important Person Entering US Government You‘ve Never Heard of” interesting. According to the write up:
The White House has named Wong, 44, a former top lawyer for Google and Twitter, as the new deputy US chief technology officer in the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
I ran a query on USA.gov this morning for Nicole Wong chief technology officer. The first hit was to a May 7, 2010, document here.
Here are my search results from www.usa.gov:
Search run at 8 50 am Eastern, July 1, 2013.
The story references Ms. Wong’s background. What I found interesting is that the “revolving door” of industry and government continues to work smoothly. Is the freshness of the Bing index an issue? Are the key public facing servers updated with fresh content?
Even in Harrod’s Creek, 2010 information is often past its “sell by” date?
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky
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