ExtraHop Offers Streaming into Additional Analytics Platforms
September 11, 2014
The article titled ExtraHop Helps to Make Data Free–Streams Into MongoDB And ElasticSearch on Forbes.com discusses the broad coverage available through ExtraHop’s metrics. With all of the growing complexity of current IT applications, ExtraHop can help both traditional and non-traditional users through their real-time analytics and Open Data Stream. In fact, ExtraHop recently began offering the possibility of streaming data sets directly into analytic solutions including MongoDB and Elasticsearch. The article explains,
“Customers can leverage ExtraHop’s skills in delivering the most relevant and useful monitoring visualizations. But at the same time that can use that same data in ways that ExtraHop could have never thought of. It gives them the ability to deliver richer and deeper insights, but it also gives them more control over where data is stored and how it is queried and manipulated. It also opens up the possibility for organizations to use multiple monitoring solutions in parallel, simply because they can.”
Gartner is quoted as saying that the importance of these ITOA technologies lies in their ability to aid the explorative and creative processes. By having these insights available, more and more users will be able to realize their ideas and perhaps even make their dreams into realities.
Chelsea Kerwin, September 11, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Microsoft Incorporates SharePoint Server Component for the Cloud
September 11, 2014
Microsoft is slowly learning that combining components of SharePoint Online and the SharePoint on-site versions tends to serve the user better. The latest combination involves SharePoint server and you can read all the details in the eWeek article, “Microsoft Borrows From SharePoint Server for Cloud-Based Intranets.”
The article begins:
“The company ports two SharePoint Server 2013 features to its cloud-based counterpart to provide a better search-driven navigation experience. Microsoft has issued an update that brings search-based navigation capabilities from the on-premises version of SharePoint to intranets based on SharePoint Online, the company’s cloud-based business collaboration platform.“
Stephen E. Arnold is an expert in search and devotes a good bit of his attention to SharePoint. His research can be found on ArnoldIT.com, and those interested in SharePoint might want to bookmark the SharePoint feed. He focuses on the tips and tricks that can make SharePoint not only tolerable, but much more functional, for both the administrator and the user.
Emily Rae Aldridge, September 11, 2014
BA Insight on the Resurrection Trail
September 10, 2014
I read “Artificial Intelligence Is Resurrecting Enterprise Search.” The unstated foundation of this write up is that enterprise search is dead. I am not sure I buy into that assumption. Last time I checked ElasticSearch was thriving with its open source approach. In fact, one “expert” pointed out that the decline in the fortunes of certain Brand Name search systems coincided with the rise in ElasticSearch’s fortunes. Connection? I don’t know, but enterprise search is thriving.
What needs resurrection (either the Phoenix variety or the Henry James’s varieties of mystical experience type) is search vendors whose software does not deliver for licensees. In this category are outfits that have just gone out of business; for example, Convera, Delphes, Entopia, Kartoo, Perfect Search, Siderean Software, and others).
Then there are the vendors with aging technology that have sold out to outfits that pack information retrieval into umbrella applications in order to put hurdles for competitors to scale. If lock in won’t work, then find a way to build a barricade. Outfits with this approach include Dassault, OpenText, Oracle, TeraText (now Leidos), among others.
Also, there are search vendors up to their ears in hock to venture funding firms. With stakeholders wanting some glimmer of a payout, the pressure is mounting. Companies in this leaky canoe include Attivio, BA Insight, Coveo, and Lucid Imagination, among others.
Another group of vendors are what I call long shots. These range from the quirky French search vendors like Antidot to Sinequa. There are some academic spin outs like Funnelback, which is now a commercial operation with its own unique challenges. And there are some other cats and dogs that live from deal to deal.
Finally, there are the giant companies looking for a way to make as much money as possible from the general ennui associated with proprietary search solutions. IBM is pitching Watson and using open source to get the basic findability function up and running. Microsoft is snagging technology from Jabber and bundling in various bits and pieces to deliver on the SharePoint vision of access to information in an organization. This Delve stuff is sort of smart, but until the product ships and provides access to a range of content types, I think Microsoft has a work in progress, not an enterprise solution upon which one can rely. The giant IHS is leveraging acquired technology into a search business, at least in the planners’ spreadsheets. Google offers its Search Appliance, which is one of the most expensive appliance solutions I have encountered. There is one witless mid tier consulting firm that believes a GSA is economical. Okay. And there is the name surfing Schubmehl from IDC who uses other people’s work to build a reputation.
To sum up, ElasticSearch is doing fine. Lots of other vendors are surviving or selling science fiction.
So what?
The “Artificial Intelligence Is Resurrecting Enterprise Search” is a write up from one of the outfits eager to generate big dollars to keep the venture capitalists happy. Hey, don’t take the money, if the recipients can’t generate big bucks.
Anyway, the premise of the write up is that enterprise search is dead and Microsoft’s Delve will give the software sector new life. The only folks who will get new life are the Microsoft savvy developers who can figure out how to set up, customize, optimize, and keep operational a grab back of software.
Microsoft wants to provide a corporate SharePoint user with a single interface to the content needed to perform work. This is a pretty tough problem. SageMaker, now long gone, failed at this effort. Google asserted that its Search Appliance could pull off this trick. Google failed. Dozens of vendors talk about federated search and generally deliver results that are of the “close but no cigar” variety.
Now what’s artificial intelligence got to do with Delve? Well, the system uses personalization and cues to figure out what a business SharePoint user wants and needs. We know how well this works with the predictive services available from Apple, Google, and—Microsoft Phone. Each time I use these services, I remember that they don’t work too well. Yep, Google really knows what I want about one out of a 1,000 queries. The other 999 Google generates laughable outputs.
Microsoft will be in the same rubber raft.
The write up does disagree with my viewpoint. Well, that’s okay because the BA Insight professional who tackles artificial intelligence is going to need more than inputs from Dave Schubmehl who recycles my information without my permission. If this write up is any indication, something has gone wrong somewhere along the line with regard to artificial intelligence, which is, I believe, an oxymoron.
Delve is, according the the write up, now “turning search on its head.” What? I need to find information about a specific topic. How will a SharePoint centric solution know I need that information? Well, that is not a viable scenario. Delve only knows what I have previously done. That’s the beauty of smart personalization. The problem is that my queries bounce from Ebola to silencers for tactical shotguns, from meth lab dispersion in Kentucky to the Muslim Brotherhood connections to certain political figures. Yep, Delve is going to be a really big help, right?
The write up asserts:
Companies need to get smarter about how they structure their information by addressing core foundational data layers. Pay attention to corporate taxonomies and introduce automated processes that add additional metadata where it’s left out from unstructured data sets. Doing this homework will make enterprise search results more relevant and will allow better results when interacting with enterprise data — whether it’s through text, voice or based on social distance. Access to enterprise data through intelligent interfaces is only getting better.
My reaction? My goodness. What the heck does this collection of buzzwords have to do with advanced software methods for information retrieval? Not much. That’s what the write is conveying to me.
Hopefully the investors in BA Insight find more to embrace than I do. If I were an investor, I would demand that my money be spent for more impactful essays, not reminders that Microsoft like IBM thrives on services, certification, and customers who may not know how to determine if software is smart.
Stephen E Arnold, September 10, 2014
Nowcasting: Lots of Behind the Scenes Human Work Necessary
September 10, 2014
Some outfits surf on the work of others. A good example is the Schubmehl-Arnold tie up. Get some color and details here.
Other outfits have plenty of big thinkers and rely on nameless specialists to perform behind the scenes work.
A good example of this approach is revealed in “Predicting the Present with Bayesian Structural Time Series.” The scholarly write up explains a procedure to perform “nowcasting.” The idea is that one can use real time information to help predict other now happenings.
Instead of doing the wild and crazy Palantir/Recorded Future forward predicting, these Googlers focus on the now.
I am okay with whatever outputs predictive systems generate. What’s important about this paper is that the authors document when humans have to get involved in the processes constructed from numerical recipes known to many advanced math and statistics whizzes.
Here are several I noted:
- The modeler has to “choose components for the modeling trend.” No problem, but it is tedious and important work. Get this step wrong and the outputs can be misleading.
- Selecting sampling algorithms, page 6. Get this wrong and the outputs can be misleading.
- Simplify by making assumptions, page 7. “Another strategy one could pursue (but we have not) is to subjectively segment predictors into groups based on how likely the would be to enter the model.”
- Breaking with Bayesian, page 8. “Scaling by “s^2/y”* is a minor violation of the Bayesian paradigm because it means our prior is data determined.”
There are other examples. These range from selecting what outputs from Google Trends and Correlate to use to the sequence of numerical recipes implemented in the model.
My point is that Google is being upfront about the need for considerable manual work in order to make its nowcasting predictive model “work.”
Analytics deployed in organizations depend on similar human behind the scenes work. Get the wrong thresholds, put the procedures in a different order, or use bad judgment about what method to use and guess what?
The outputs are useless. As managers depend on analytics to aid their decision making and planners rely on models to predict the future, it is helpful to keep in mind that an end user may lack the expertise to figure out if the outputs are useful. If useful, how much confidence should a harried MBA put in predictive models.
Just a reminder that ISIS caught some folks by surprise, analytics vendor HP seemed to flub its predictions about Autonomy sales, and the outfits monitoring Ebola seem to be wrestling with underestimations.
Maybe enterprise search vendors can address these issues? I doubt it.
Note: my blog editor will not render mathematical typography. Check the original Google paper on page 8, line 4 for the correct representation.
Stephen E Arnold, September 10, 2014
Jetpac the Visual Search App Acquired by Google
September 10, 2014
The article on TechCrunch titled Google Buys Jetpac To Give Context To Visual Searches describes the latest app acquired by Google. Jetpac is an app used to guide tourists and city-dwellers around the hottest bars and most relevant hang-outs for a particular user. Using Instagram data, Jetpac helps its users determine what a coffee shop actually looks like and what the atmosphere is like based on the visual cues from Instagram. The article states,
“Jetpac’s system looks for visual cues like the amount of pictures with mustaches in them to determine the fashion style or how many hipsters are in a certain location. This provides unique contextual information about an area where the photo was taken. It can tell you whether a coffee shop is actually chill like the reviews say or help you find bars women in their 30’s love, for instance. This goes beyond just a Yelp or Google Maps review…”
Clearly, Google is still chasing satisfactory visual search. The CEO of Jetpac is “computer vision expert” Pete Warden. His work in producing real-time local object recognition for his app may help to improve Google Goggles as well. While information about the acquisition has not yet been released by Google, we do know that Jetpac will no longer be available in the App store in the coming days.
Chelsea Kerwin, September 10, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Yahoo Concentrates On Local Search
September 10, 2014
One search trend that is proving profitable is local search. Users want search results that correspond to their immediate areas, rather than generic, global results. To cash in this market, “Yahoo Acquires Startup Zofari To Bolster Local Search” says CNet. Zofari is a local search startup that recommends places to visit. Zofari pulls its data from Foursquare and user provider data about what they like, similar to Pandora and Netflix. Zofari even acknowledges these services inspired it.
“The purchase is just one of more than 40 that CEO Marissa Mayer has made since she took the reins at Yahoo more than two years ago, but it’s aligned specifically with the company’s desire to build out its mobile search offerings. The buy comes at a time when Yahoo’s display ad sales — an important financial metric, though becoming less en vogue as users move to mobile devices — fell 7 percent last quarter.”
Mayer has been testing new ways to save Yahoo. She has saved the company from drowning, but it is still flipping about to compete with Google. Yahoo’s problems go deeper than anyone suspected, but acquisitions like Zofari could possibly strengthen it.
Whitney Grace, September 10, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IBM Study Finds that Analytics Are Approaching Saturation
September 9, 2014
I read “New IBM Study Reveals 3 Key Characteristics of the Most Successful Companies.” Like most big company research that finds its way into content marketing programs, the information is a rah rah for IBM.
I noted that one of the study’s allegedly objective findings may suggest a rather ominous factoid for purveyors of fancy analytics systems.
Here’s the statement from the article I noted:
The study found that nearly 90 percent of the more than 1,400 respondents have mature big data and analytics capabilities, while 60 percent plan to increase investment in this area by 10 percent or more over the next two years. Additionally, nearly seven out of 10 pacesetter organizations make analytical insights a significant part of their decision-making process.
For vendors, if the 90 percent number for having mature Big Data and analytics capabilities is on the money, revenue will flow from swap outs, upgrades, and services. The flood of analytics start ups may find that their revenue goals are going to be difficult to meet. Furthermore, consolidation is not just likely. Consolidation is inevitable.
Another point that struck me is that 70 percent of the IBM sample already rely on fancy math to help managers make decisions. From my vantage point, the thrust of many management decisions boil down to cost cutting and acquisitions. Does this mean that the marketing is approaching saturation?
Innovation seems to be ripping along, but the velocity comes from shorter product cycles, non repairable products, and services that change with each marketing brochure rewrite.
Check out the study. Draw your own conclusions.
For me, the search vendors pitching information retrieval systems that tame Big Data and eliminate the hassle of traditional analytics via queries may be late to the party. If a vendor is already at the party, growth becomes a challenge unless search and content processing vendors become consulting and service firms. Proprietary software vendors may find themselves forced to embrace the open source approach to software and hope their sales professionals can generate sufficient revenues to pay the bills, pay back investors, and generate a profit. The US economy is in recovery mode, according to some, which search and content processing vendors will break out of the findability herd?
Stephen E Arnold, September 9, 2014
HP Autonomy Hackathons
September 9, 2014
In early September 2014, Hewlett Packard announced its hackathons. These are designed to “unleash developer creativity.” The hacks will demonstrate the power of [the] IDOL OnDemand platform.
HP has lined up events at DataWeek and API World, Legal Hackers, HackMIT Hackathon, and TCO14. The most interesting comment in the announcement is this statement attributed to the IDOL OnDemand “evangelist”:
IDOL OnDemand is the ideal platform for today’s developer looking to build amazing applications in the mobile, big data world. The hackathons are terrific opportunities for developers to engage with their peers and the IDOL OnDemand platform, and are always a lot of fun too.
For me, the most fun I have is watching Hewlett Packard sling mud at Autonomy, Deloitte, and former Autonomy employees.
The idea informing these hackathons appears to be building apps for HP’s Autonomy IDOL in the cloud initiative. Compared to ElasticSearch, HP is putting quite a bit of effort into this program. ElasticSearch, on the other hand, announces a developer training session and the developers show up.
Perhaps HP’s struggles with IDOL have something to do with one or more of these factors:
- Open source options / alternatives to proprietary information retrieval systems
- HP’s history of management turnover
- HP’s on again and off again approach to certain business initiatives
- The public relations stemming from the Autonomy litigation.
Did I omit a factor or two? Use the comments section to set me straight.
Stephen E Arnold, September 9, 2014
Bing Says It Will Make Searches Easier?
September 9, 2014
Tech snobs are reevaluating their opinions of Bing. Why? Because Apple has made it the default search engine for its products. Bing, however, is trying to improve its search quality and Search Engine Watch says “Bing Makes Technical Searches Easier.” Bing has streamlined its technical searches, which means if you are searching for technical jargon or more specifically: API and codes, non-alphanumeric characters, software information, and answers about Microsoft products, things are about to get easier.
Bing’s goal is to make technical search be more accurate, similar to recent endeavors to make search respond to natural speech. The article says that developers trying to find code hidden in documents and consumers will benefit the most from the new search.
“Bing also says it has determined the top factors among consumers looking for software include cost, reviews, and safety, as well as official or verified sites from which to download the software and similar products that might be better than the product included in the original search. As a result, Bing says it has developed an experience in which the entity pane provides a quick description of the product, along with clearly displayed information about cost, official and trusted download locations, and reviews.”
Then if you are searching for answers about Microsoft products, instant answers, a new feature, will appear at the top of results. Not a bad idea, considering that troubleshooting a Microsoft machine is harder than using Adobe Photoshop in Chinese.
When it comes to technical searches, usually you have to spend hours surfing through outdated forums that might resolve your problem and searching for the one piece of code. It’s needed and much appreciated. Good for you, Bing!
Whitney Grace, September 09, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Big Brother GPS
September 9, 2014
With rising living costs, people are trying to cut back on their expenses. One of the ways they are reducing costs is by allowing their auto insurance companies to monitor their driving habits for a discount. Science Daily highlights a Rutgers University study called “How Fast You Drive Might Reveal Exactly Where You Are Going.” What these drivers do not know is that they are revealing where they are driving. Cue the privacy concerns.
The study found that even without a GPS device, a driver reveals where they are going based off how fast they drive. When you put dollar signs in someone eyes, however, they will probably forego some of their privacy rights. Companies claim they are not compromising privacy, but the data they track can be extrapolated to show a driver’s destination.
“The technique, dubbed “elastic pathing,” predicts pathways by seeing how speed patterns match street layouts. Take for example, a person whose home is at the end of a cul-de-sac a quarter mile from an intersection. The driver’s speed data would show a minute of driving at up to 30 miles per hour to reach that intersection. Then if a left turn leads the driver to a boulevard or expressway but a right turn leads to a narrow road with frequent traffic lights or stop signs, you could deduce which way the driver turned if the next batch of speed data showed a long stretch of fast driving or a slow stretch of stop-and-go driving. By repeatedly matching speed patterns with the most likely road patterns, the route and destination can be approximated.”
The article argues that insurance companies are not doing anything wrong, but they should not advertise that the speed devices are not collecting private information. It is even suggested that insurance companies consider using alternative speedometer readings for better privacy protection. Just wait a few years for this to make more headlines or a court case could subpeona the information. It is only a matter of time.
Whitney Grace, September 09, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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