Momentary Attention Placed on Connotate in the Search Software Market
December 14, 2012
One search and content processing software vendor seems to be picking up steam based on the news release, “Connotate Reports Expansion into New Markets and Applications in Third Quarter 2012.” Privately-held, ventured backed software firm Connotate is moving in a growth-oriented direction. They have announced new partnerships with both Systech, a leading business intelligence services provider, and Crowdsource, Amazon Mechanical Turk Partner.
Connotate has directed attention to itself by announcing a significant increase in bookings and partner signings in the third quarter 2012. Growth is demand for its solutions by a variety of use cases has also helped in making Connotate’s case for positive growth.
The article quotes Ryan Mulholland, president of Connotate:
“We anticipate continued expansion into new markets and applications as the focus of Big Data turns outward to the vast untapped potential of the Web. Our technology platform was built to ensure optimal results and timely data. As a full-service solution, our ability to offer CAPTCHA and throttling as well as follow-the-sun support is unparalleled in the industry – and customers are reaping the rewards of this approach.”
Connotate seems to be headed in a good direction, but we wonder about their competition. Are other search and content processing vendors following the same path? This may be a crowded market sector.
Megan Feil, December 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Solutions Deliver Information Access Rather than Marketed Language
December 13, 2012
Terms that have become ubiquitous in recent years such as big data and business intelligence are actually traceable back to the mid 1900s. Smart Data Collective reports some useful facts and background on the two terms and discusses the popularity of each today in the article, “Is Big Data the New Term for Business Intelligence.”
Most interesting is the chart with data on popularity of the two terms as search queries. Business intelligence has been steadily used since 2006 (the earliest date on the chart) but big data has skyrocketed to its level in the last year. Before 2011 it only remained slightly more utilized as a search term than business analytics.
We learned:
So everybody, even those not using Hadoop etc, started using [big data] in conjunction with whatever was new in the industry. This meant that the definition of “big data” quickly became another industry squabbling match that has generated liters of ink (and nostalgia: The Google Books Ngram Viewer seems to show the term was first used in the 1930s and that the term was clearly used in roughly the same sense as today even in 1969: “”Datamec has made some headway outside the field of big data processors”).
There are solutions from innovative companies such as PolySpot that focus purely on information delivery within the enterprise rather than marketing and language delivery.
Megan Feil, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com developer of Augmentext
Cisco Closes Knowledge Gap with LucidWorks
December 13, 2012
When Cisco needed a new internal solution for corporate communications, they turned to open source search solutions. However, they needed an expert consultation to get them started, and turn the open source foundation into a working solution designed for their customized needs. They turned to LucidWorks. The full case study details are provided in, “Closing the Knowledge Gap: A Case Study – How Cisco Unlocks Communications.”
After a discussion of the consulting process, and LucidWorks’ customized solution created specifically for Cisco, the author concludes:
“When content finds you, it brings the exercise of search and knowledge management full circle. While topics you are working on are indexed and understood by the search system, the same thing is happening at the same time with others, across your organization. The content becomes the connection between people working on similar projects. By building on the power of Lucene/Solr search, Cisco has transformed content from a passive, accumulating archive to a dynamic network of people and information.”
LucidWorks’ out-of-the-box solutions are ready to go, and often just the right solution for smaller organizations that can’t quite afford the same intense consultation process that Cisco chose. LucidWorks Search is a highly secure, scalable, development platform. LucidWorks Big Data is designed to handle even the most demanding content environments, specializing in high volume.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Big Data Drives Business Decisions with Enterprise Search
December 12, 2012
Big data is making the transition from a catchy trend to a serious power in the business world. A flurry of acquisitions involving big data and enterprise search systems are proving that value is being added to big data. According to recent article “Structuring the Unstructured: Why Big Data is Suddenly Interested in Enterprise Search” on CMSWire, this can be attributed to the inclusion of unstructured data (hard-to-predict human content,) into big data analyses, and companies are becoming more and more interested in creating actionable insights from this data set.
The article continues to explain the need to obtain value from unstructured data:
“It is the hands-on application of processes, pragmatism and checksums that produce the most value from unstructured data. A focus on transparency of process creates confidence in data provenance and enables actionable intelligence from unstructured data. That combination of technology and process is what is driving recent acquisitions and what can drive your business to make better, more accurate decisions based on your unstructured big data.”
The whole point of making structured and unstructured data available is so that the right information can drive business decisions. Intrafind makes finding the right data at the right time a bit easier in the age of big data. The company’s software and enterprise search solutions can help you target necessary information from the big data madness and also provide the consultancy services to help you decide what to do with that information.
Andrea Hayden, December 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Solutions Tap Into Information from All Enterprise Applications
December 12, 2012
Will big data be big news in 2013? Smart Data Collective thinks so; popularity in the press in addition to promising research on its impact means there will be no slowing down. Their recently published article, “The Big Deal in Big Data is a Big Opportunity,” shows that big data was not the top priority for many businesses.
IT, analytics, collaboration and mobile were all ranked of high importance by businesses in the study by Ventana Research.
The article describes several findings:
Our research into business technology innovation finds that lack of resources is the largest barrier (51%), and having IT expend significant quantities of time and resources on big data without a strong business context is a recipe for failure. Thankfully for many organizations, planning approaches for technology such as specialized DBMS (45%), in-memory databases (40%), data warehouse appliances (37%) and Hadoop (36%) requires a solid business case to move to full evaluation and deployment mode.
We do not have information on wording used in the research, but obviously IT, analytics and mobile are all inherently connected to big data. Companies have been focused on big data after all. Those who have not, should concentrate on corralling information from all enterprise applications into a network that can extract and deliver meaningful insights out of it, such as solutions from PolySpot.
Megan Feil, December 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com developer of Augmentext
Acronym with an Added Buzz Word is Bound to Sell
December 12, 2012
Everyone wants in on big data; there is no question about the popularity and ubiquity of this catchall. PC Advisor UK realizes this, but they also tell us about something new in their recent article, “Big Data Leading to New Breed of Service Provider.”
Data as a service (DaaS) providers have been around for years. The concept is nothing new; Dun & Bradstreet, LexisNexis or Thomson Reuters have been doing it for years. However, they were not attached to the buzz phrase of big data. EMC released a report recently, “Big Data as a Service: A Market and Technology Perspective,” that shows startups for the BDaaS markets should have no problem getting funding.
The article reveals who is looking for a piece of the pie:
“-EMC is pushing its integrated stack– Greenplum HD an enterprise-ready Hadoop platform, and Isilon NAS for Hadoop-to Big Data platform providers looking to take on big Hadoop jobs for clients. (Would that be BD/PaaS?)
-Opera Solutions has grown from 10 data scientists in 2004 to 220 today. The company offers firms in the Global 250 and large governmental organizations a semi-turnkey Big Data solution set aimed at analytics and insights.”
Trend Micro and LexisNexis Risk Solutions are also contenders. It would not be surprising if all four walked away with some funding; the demand is simply projected to be that great.
Megan Feil, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
ElasticSearch Scores Ten Million in Funding
December 12, 2012
ElasticSearch has secured some hefty new financing for its analytics engine and other projects, we learn from the post, “Elasticsearch Big Data Search Startup Pulls in $10M Funding” at the TrustedInsight blog. With this $10 million in series A funding, Elasticsearch will have to work fast to outrun the one-man-band reputation the firm has earned since the days of Compass search.
The press release specifies:
“In addition to [primary investor] Benchmark, other investors in the round include Rod Johnson, the creator of the Spring Framework and co-founder of SpringSource, and Data Collective. Elasticsearch said it will use this initial round of funding to help build out the organization in all functional areas and expand into key geographic regions to support the adoption of Elasticsearch. The open-source search and analytics software emerged in the last six months as one of the more popular open-source projects in the big data market and is already being used by thousands of companies all over the world, the company said.”
Shay Banon, founder of the Compass open source search project, decided that the software really needed a complete overhaul; the ElasticSearch software, which Banon says he sees as “Compass 3.0,” is the result. Both projects are built on Apache Lucene.
ElasticSearch (the company) was formed this year by Banon and folks from Apache. It offers resources for users of the ElasticSearch solution with training, consultancy services, and support subscription plans. Naturally, they emphasize their unique expertise on the subject. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Cynthia Murrell, December 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Solutions Break Silos to Deliver Information Efficiently
December 11, 2012
A recent article from Entrepreneur states what we have all been thinking over the last several years in particular. Big data is now a fact of life. Huge volumes of data are not only created by each of us on a regular basis, but we also utilize these pieces of data to inform us in every industry imaginable. The article, “ The Goliath of Big Data Meets Its David,” discusses this in regards to a potential new solution.
This solution comes from none other than a new Silicon Valley business-to-business startup Peaxy. The essential goal is to eradicate dependence on a certain brand of hardware or generation of server. Then, clients’ data can be freed from individual silos.
The article states:
By allowing the data to mingle freely in a single “namespace” composed of many servers, they say, you can glean insights from multiple blocks of data. Terranova gives the example of car manufacturers that need to marry proprietary engineering data with customer feedback in order to build accurate predictive models for vehicle maintenance problems.
Silos must be broken down; there is no doubt about that. We have seen much success in this regard from one company in particular: PolySpot. With over 100 connectors, their solutions deliver information securely across the enterprise in real-time.
Megan Feil, December 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Enables Monetization of Data with Information Delivery Networks
December 10, 2012
The question remains on the table for many businesses as to when they will begin to embrace big data as the tool that can revolutionize how they do business. From the Harvard Business Review comes an article “What a Big-Data Business Model Looks Like perfectly suited as reading for organizations who are curious about taking the plunge.
The author describes three main tools he has seen emerge to fit the needs of businesses looking to extract value from big data. The first involves utilizing data to create differentiated offerings. The second concentrates on brokering this information. The third is about building networks to deliver data where it’s needed, when it’s needed.
A quick skim through the article will point any smart business to the third and most exciting software option: delivery networks are said to enable monetization of data.
The article tells us:
Content creators — the information providers and brokers — will seek placement and distribution in as many ways as possible. This means, first, ample opportunities for the arms dealers — the suppliers of the technologies that make all this gathering and exchange of data possible. It also suggests a role for new marketplaces that facilitate the spot trading of insight, and deal room services that allow for private information brokering.
Information must be in the hands or computers of those who need to use it at the moment they require the specific data. Luckily, PolySpot technologies have the capability to deliver information in this manner.
Megan Feil, December 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com developer of Augmentext
Presidential Debates Meets Match with Semantic Analysis
December 10, 2012
Literary analysis meets big data analytics in the context of US politics. It’s a wild world we live in, but an important press release published by the Italian firm Expert System discussed the results of analysis on the language of the US presidential debates. “Obama Vs. Romney on Language: The Three Debates” breaks down the rhetoric into information on most used words and more.
Semantic and linguistic analysis was conducted by Expert System using the Cogito semantic platform to find that Romney used literally more words than Obama amounting to 14% percent more. As for word choice, Romney went for concepts with taxes, plans, programs, job, and America featured prominently. Obama’s most frequently used concept words were business and labor, but he was most often heard uttering the action verbs of do and make.
The article quoted Luca Scagliarini, VP Strategy & Business Development, Expert System:
“The upcoming elections in the U.S. have resulted in some very interesting analysis. This analysis focused only on the topics and concepts mentioned by the candidates, and while it is by no means a predictor, we believe that the semantic analysis of content will help anyone better understand and deal more effectively with any type of information.”
Obviously there would be no predictive value to this system. Knowing which words were mentioned more often than others by each candidate simply helps to inform voters about rhetoric, the impact of word choices and any potential values that could be extrapolated from this information.
Megan Feil, December 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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