Kapow Reinforces It Is a Big Data Platform
July 21, 2013
Short honk: Data integration, like search, is expanding. We noted a news release called “Kapow Software Quarterly Revenue Rises as Newly Acquired Customer Bookings and Subscriptions Fuel Growth.” The news release explains that a privately held firm is growing. The important point for me was this phrase: “a leading Big Data solution provider.”
The news release explains:
The Kapow Enterprise Big Data Integration Platform enables companies to integrate any cloud or on-premise data source using Kapow Software’s patented, intelligent integration workflows and Synthetic APIs™. Once the critical data is found and surgically extracted, Kapow Enterprise 9.2 delivers timely information to the workforce in an easily consumable form called Kapow Kapplets™ through an enterprise app library offering called the Kapow KappZone™. KappZones can be easily branded and distributed for employees to discover and use on any computing device they choose.
The Kapow Web site points out that the company’s business includes:
- Content integration
- Content migration
- Legacy application integration
- Enterprise search.
The company also offers three aforementioned products: Katalyst, Kapplets, and KappZone. I find this semantic embrace fascinating and indicative of a trend in which vendors pretty much do anything related to information which is, it seems, Big Data.
Stephen E Arnold, July 21, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky
Clarabridge and Brandwatch Partner Up and Promise More Sophisticated Customer Analytics
July 21, 2013
The article on Contact Centre Live titled Clarabridge Partners with Brandwatch to Extend its Clarabridge Social Solutions addresses the partnership between the Customer Experience Management provider Clarabridge and the global analytics provider Brandwatch. The two companies believe their integration will deliver the resources to gain a holistic understanding of any given business’s customer base. CEO of Clarabridge Sid Banerjee commented,
“Clarabridge has been and continues to be the pioneer in multi-source customer experience management for the Global 1000. Our partnership with Brandwatch provides our customers with an integrated end-to-end solution for social media, further expanding our Clarabridge Social offering. The level of rich social media data provided by Brandwatch, coupled with the intelligent analytics and operational capabilities of Clarabridge, adds up to the most sophisticated CEM hub available on the market and that is incredibly beneficial to our customers.”
The two companies bring different technological advances to the table. Brandwatch is able to capture data from millions of sites in over 25 languages and is able to filter out the irrelevant data, refining searches. Clarabridge, which seems to have moved beyond its original market, offers a method of skipping past social posts without merit and discover the insightful posts buried beneath the spam.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Autonomy: A New Kind of Search?
July 20, 2013
Autonomy was founded in 1996. That was 17 years ago. In my upcoming KMWorld column for August/September, I point out that search, content processing, and even analytics have been consistent for many years. There are a number of reasons for the “sameness” of systems and the corresponding difficulty prospects have in differentiating one system from another.
Perhaps I am off base. Search systems, content processing systems, and analytics systems are very, very different. I am looking at out dated notions such as precision and recall. I am missing the point that search is about interface, “smart” software which knows what I want based on my past behavior, and mobile computing demands search apps which just present information. No information retrieval baloney required like a carefully crafted Boolean query.
I read with interest and my acknowledged lack of expertise “Analytics for Human Information: Enterprise Search in the age of Big Data.” In one article, I learned that HP Autonomy delivers analytics and search in a big data world. More interesting was this phrase “a new kind of search is here.” Okay, after 17 years, I am open to innovation even though I see more and more similarity.
The article asserts:
Here at HP Autonomy, we think the market is hungry for a more open and comprehensive approach to solving big data access problems. So we are excited to be launching a promotion program called Enterprise Search Rescue to help Microsoft FAST and Oracle Endeca customers migrate to Autonomy IDOL quickly and seamlessly. Everyone deserves a search technology that can solve tomorrow’s challenges.
My recollection is that when HP acquired Autonomy a number of Autonomy vendors offered demonstrations and programs to “rescue” Autonomy customers from HP. Oracle Endeca is cutting some of its prices and the founders have moved on to other interests. Microsoft Fast is a money machine for consultants, but rumors swirl that changes are coming.
What we have then, is Autonomy reinventing itself to provide an alternative to Endeca (founded in 1999) and Fast Search & Transfer (founded in 1997).
Am I alone in finding it somewhat amusing to see these aging search systems trying to capture one another’s customers? Are there less proprietary solutions available; for example, perhaps an Autonomy licensee could implement LucidWorks and gain some advantages?
Net net. Yep, I think many organizations are hungry for findability solutions which work, do not cost millions, and can cope with today’s information tasks. I read a news release last week that pointed out no new search system has been patented by the USPTO in the last five years. You can find that story here.
When is “new” new?
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky
Rainstor Claims Hadoop Secure Even for Large Banks
July 20, 2013
The article titled RainStor Adds Enterprise-Grade Security, Search to Hadoop on ITWorld discusses the database specialist’s answer to the Big Data problem. What problem, you ask? When your clients number among the world’s largest banks, security and speedy search are of paramount importance. The article explains,
“When you put Hadoop into production, especially if you’re a telco or a large investment or retail bank, you suddenly have to think about the sensitivity and importance of the data,” says John Bantleman, CEO of RainStor. “If you lose a webclick, nobody cares. But if you allow unauthorized users access to high-value data … the requirements are just so much more rigorous. You need good authentication. You need to manage encryption keys and have an understanding around how the data is used.”
Rainstor’s data compression technology reduces the storage footprint by up to 97%, and they believe their enterprise-grade security and search for Hadoop will solve past problems. Data encryption, data masking, audit trail and tamper proofing are all new security features. The search aspect was also a priority (another search Hadoop play). Rainstor claims that its search capability performs at speeds 10 to 100 times faster than standard SQL by quickly dividing data into subsets, which analysts can further explore.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Finding an Optical Character Recognition Program
July 19, 2013
The I ran the following query for a client project yesterday: “OCR programs.”
I passed the query to Google, Yandex, and Bing in that order. What did I find?
There are 11 ads and 10 hits, one set of news items and one set of related search suggestions. Several the links pointed me to downloads which were too confusing to try. The other links pointed to information ranging from Google Groups to commercial companies’ products.
Here’s what Yandex delivered to me:
No ads and mostly general information, including a hit to TextBridge which is no longer current.
And Bing?
There were five ads, related searches in two places, and links to mostly “free” programs and general information sites.
The reason this is an important series of examples is that I have been reading some of the articles about Google’s somewhat disappointing earnings results. The numbers are huge, but when most search and content processing companies are struggling for growth, Google is the Sir Lancelot of search vendors. If Google can’t grow quickly, what does that say about Google’s business strategy, about other search and content processing companies, and the US economy? My takeaway is not much different from that expressed in USA Today. Yes, USA Today, what one of my goslings calls “McPaper.”
The story is “Google Earnings Clipped in Mobile Headwinds.” The main point is, in my opinion:
Concerns continue about so-called cost-per-click prices that advertisers pay Google for Internet-search advertising.
And then:
Google’s average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of its network members, decreased about 6% in the quarter compared with a year ago. Analysts had predicted prices would drop about 3% in the period.
JackBe Embraces SharePoint with Presto Release
July 19, 2013
An article on Business Wire titled JackBe Presto Makes SharePoint Real-Time for the Enterprise reports on the software provider, JackBe. JackBe provides intuitive dashboards that organize Big Data. Presto Add-On for SharePoint, the most recent version of their software, allows users to build apps and dashboards with a familiar interface. The article explains,
“Presto Add-On for SharePoint enables users to query Presto-connected data within SharePoint, using SharePoint Search. In addition, the solution’s new “FAST Enterprise Search” Wires block provides a simple drag-and-drop search experience using FAST, SharePoint’s popular enterprise search capability. Powered by Wires, Presto’s “point-click-mash” visual assembly tool, Presto Add-On for SharePoint enables mashing of multiple FAST search results with support for keyword and FAST Query Language (FQL) queries. This allows users to easily combine data from multiple sources, lists and queries into single, meaningful data visualizations.”
Not only FAST Search block, but several other new Wires are included in the recent upgrade. SharePoint List Add Item, SharePoint List, SharePoint List Merge, SharePoint Search and External Content Adapter are all Wire blocks that will enable reading and replying to data sources and solving List ID issues. We can’t help but notice that as soon as other vendors are exiting SharePoint, JackBe jumps in full throttle.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
EU Threatens Ban If Google Fails to Comply With Regulations
July 19, 2013
Another article about Google’s trouble with the EU is titled Google Behavior Risks Banning Order If Talks With EU Fail, on Bloomberg.com. According to the article, Google has finally made some attempts at acquiescing to the EU’s complaints. Up until now, the threat of a fine seemed to have little to no affect on the search engine giant, but the article states that the EU may be able to inflict more than a monetary punishment,
“There is a tougher way to handle it,” EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a speech in Madrid. That would mean issuing a so-called statement of objections and ultimately a decision “prohibiting” certain behavior, he said. Google, the owner of the world’s largest search engine, in April offered to label its branded search services and show links “to three rival specialized search services close to its own” as part of a series of commitments to end the almost three-year-old probe.”
Much of the EU’s concern is focused on Google stifling competitive advertising by placing its own products at the top of searches. Google believes it has done a “pretty good job” of addressing these issues. There is also an anti-trust probe into Google’s Motorola Mobility Unit.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Acquisition of Gigablast by Yippy Leaves Some Questions Unanswered
July 19, 2013
An article on Yahoo titled Yippy, Inc. (YIPI) to Acquire Gigablast, Inc. And Web Research Properties, LLC to Expand Consumer Search, Enterprise, and eDiscovery Products reported on the important acquisition by the young company. Yippy, Inc. is a search clustering tech company based in Florida with some innovative eDiscovery resources. Matt Wells, the founder of Gigablast states in the article,
“Gigablast and its related properties can provide advanced technologies for consumer, eDiscovery, and enterprise big data customers. Gigabits, a related program, is the first operational enterprise class clustering program which I put into service in 2004. Yippy’s Velocity platform was essentially based off of my original work which will allow Yippy to sell behind the firewall installations for all types of search based applications for enterprise and eDiscovery customers.”
Yippy’s Chief Executive Rich Granville claims that the acquisition will not only benefit customers through technological innovation but by low costs. He directed interested parties to a demo that might illustrate the massive potential in the merger of these companies. The demo shows that the combined indexing of billions of pages of data has already begun, although not when it will be complete. What is less clear is who is indexing what in this tie-up?
Chelsea Kerwin, July 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Inputs Requested on Latest Open Source News
July 19, 2013
Bob Gourley of Sys-Con Media is compiling reader input on some of the latest news in open source search. Read what Gourley has to say in his article, “Request Your Inputs For A Coming CTOvision Piece on Impact of Cloudera Impala, Search and CDH Releases.”
He begins:
“We are beginning to formulate assessments on the potential impact to the federal technology community of some recent developments we believe will have far-reaching and positive impact. Over the last quarter Cloudera has continued to announce strategic partnerships, improvements to their open source technology integrations, and new capabilities that will improve the ability of organizations to make sense over their data holdings. We are preparing assessments on the potential impact of these announcements on the federal integrator community and on federal organizations.”
Much of what Gourley has to say revolves around the Cloudera release of a search appliance built on Solr and integrated with Hadoop. Does this configuration sound familiar? It sounds a lot like LucidWorks Big Data to many in the know. The open source combination is obviously a huge success, but only time will tell if Cloudera will be able to provide the level of support and service for which LucidWorks is well known and upon which they have built their success.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Embedded Security Noted As Additional Benefit of API
July 18, 2013
News of Intel’s acquisition of Mashery is still popping up on our radar. The ReadWrite article “Intel’s Buying Mashery To Get Deeper Inside The Data Center” offers an insightful perspective on why the chip giant went after a seven year old company that specializes in linking together Web-based software and services. In other words, Mashery is an API management service.
The focal point of the article reference circles around the idea that Intel no longer sees the computer as a silicon chip — now, they recognize the CPU as a network.
The article discusses the implications:
The same techniques that connect consumer apps, it turns out, also work well within large businesses. Comcast, for example, uses Mashery’s API management service to allow programmers to access internal systems. That’s a far more sensible way to create internal software than the alternative, which involves doing a lot of one-off integrations at considerable time and expense.
In addition to efficiency, a prime use case for APIs are eliminating any security risks a corporation has. We are seeing smart companies develop solutions such as Cogito API, which offers businesses concerned with avoiding risks the confidence in using a solution already embedded with corporate security measures.
Megan Feil, July 18, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
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