New Features in SharePoint Search
December 8, 2009
I saw a link to a new white paper about SharePoint search. I clicked the link. I had to provide my user name and password and fill in a bunch of check boxes about how much money I spent on computers, my title, and my phone number. I registered Tess, my rescued boxer. When the paper displayed, I was informed that the MSDN Tech Net document was not in the “hi bin.” What I saw was an ASCII rendering of a bunch of boilerplate. The direct link to “What’s New in Enterprise Search (SharePoint Server 2010)” reveals a November 10, 2009, document even though the newsfeed showed that the story came down the wire earlier today (December 7, 2009). If the link doesn’t work, try the Google Microsoft index here.
What does the white paper disclose? Lots of features. My impression is that Microsoft gathered up the marketing collateral of Autonomy, Endeca, Exalead, and other vendors. The company then took a pinch here and a pinch there, including for good measure a farm connector wizard. Amazing. I think a white paper should have some facts, hard data, and useful information. A white paper now means brochureware it seems.
Stephen Arnold, December 8, 2009
I am breathless with excitement to disclose that I was not paid to point out that this white paper is a collection of marketing lingo. Which agency has jurisdiction over this type of silly blog writing? I know. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Poetic, right?
Googzilla Switches Its Tail and Imperils Some Real Time Search Services
December 8, 2009
One this about scale is that it is often big. Big in data is good. The addled goose will leave it to you to read Google’s “Relevance Meets the Real-Time Web”. You can wade through the punditry. For this goose, here is the key paragraph in today’s (December 7, 2009) announcement:
Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day. Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our new partners that we’re announcing today: Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter, which we announced a few weeks ago.
Several comments:
- Folks pumping dough into the many real time indexing operations are likely to have second thoughts and will be asked some tough questions like “So, how is your service better than Google’s?”
- Users will have convenience delivery. This is like the 7-11 approach to shopping. The “cost” is irrelevant. The service makes the experience valuable.
- Forget the UX or user experience. The Google delivers data. Microsoft will have to come up with a hat and then find a rabbit in it.
Now what does this mean for “real” news? Interesting question. I will wait until a pundit, satrap, wizard, or azure chip consultant elucidates. I am a reactive goose.
Stephen Arnold, December 8, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I want to disclose to the Greenwich Observatory that I was not paid to make this comment. Lots of tourists in Greenwich.
Surprises in Search: Holiday Gifts for Pundits
December 6, 2009
The first week of December 2009 delivered a rich feast to mavens, pundits, poobahs, and azure chip consultants. Kwanza and Chanukah arrived early.
What’s transpired in the last week or so?
First, Google jumped into eCommerce search, hired Endeca’s chief technology officer, and made it clear that it wanted to suck in some cash from this lucrative sector of the information retrieval market. I know that most of this eCommerce excitement happened over a period of weeks, but the significance of this tactical move is significant. Endeca which has been working through its cash injections from Intel and SAP now has a real fight on its hands. The company has an RV full of bright MBAs, and it will need these folks to convert a Google thrust into new revenue. Fun holiday and New Year’s Day ahead for the Endeca folks. My “cutting Endeca from the herd” story evoked a gust of push back when I voiced my opinion. I stand by my argument in “Google Cuts Endeca from the Search Herd”.
Second, Microsoft and Yahoo finally got married. Well, maybe the right word is decided to implement their version of the Bernard Slade play “Same Time, Next Year.” The two outfits are going to team up to challenge Google. If you are not on top of this unusual sales / search deal, you may find the Macworld write up a useful summary. Read “Microsoft, Yahoo Finalize Search Deal.”
Third, Oracle, a notoriously aggressive outfit, attacked Mark Logic in a white paper filled with interesting assertions. I wrote about this on December 3, 2009. If direct attacks escalate, 2010 will be a contentious year. The notion that a multi billion dollar database company is threatened by a next generation XML data management system says more about the fear that traditional companies have for smaller firms with better technology.
Finally, the odd yet interesting machinations of traditional publishing companies have signaled a perceived urgency in adapting to the digital information environment. There’s the dust up between Google and News Corp. over indexing. I noted the San Francisco Chronicle’s take on one facet of this battle in “Google’s Schmidt Strikes Back at Murdoch.” More interesting is the push by traditional print publishers to create an online newsstand, sort of a modern day version of the old “Magazine Rack” idea from 15 years ago. You can read about this “old wine in new bottles” approach in “Publishers Alliance to Create iTunes for Print Media as Tablet Rumours Continue to Build”. The problem with this idea is that it is aimed at a generation of readers. The demographics argue that readers will be a small percentage of the consumer population which may not bode well for dreams of new revenue for traditional publishers.
I am looking forward to the discussion of these holiday season topics.
Stephen Arnold, December 6, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I wish to disclose to Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia that I was not paid to write this round up of holiday delights.
London Online: The Missing Trends
December 6, 2009
The endnote at the International Online Conference succeeded in getting insightful comments from the panelists and eliciting probing questions from the audience. The downside was that the 90 minute session covered four of the 10 trends advertised in the program. The four trends discussed in the endnote were rising Google pressure, more use of XML, a surge in rich media for core information exchange, and more security safety nets with increased user surveillance likely.
In response to several emails from attendees, here are the missing six trends:
Trend 5: Libraries will be under increasing budget pressure. As a result, interest in lower-cost, cloud-based solutions will rise sharply in 2010. One consequence will more financial woes for library vendors, including commercial database producers.
Trend 6: More demands for timely data. Although not real-time indexing and content delivery, the newer services will strive to reduce latency (staleness) of information available to users in an organization.
Trend 7: Mobile search will become more important. The impact on the length of certain types of textual information will be significant. Those without fast network connections will be unable to access the rich media that will become a larger percentage of the information on offer.
Trend 8: Even if the economic climate improves in 2010, there will be increasing financial pressure on information, search, and content processing companies. Content management and enterprise search vendors will be particularly vulnerable. Neither CMS nor search can “explain” precisely their benefits so marketing, not technical excellence will mean the difference between survival and a buy out or extinction.
Trend 9: Open source will gain traction. Traditional vendors will have to deal with the financial and technical payoffs open source offers. In some organizations, open source will become an acceptable alternative to certain software systems. At the same time, open source vendors will monetize their services. Confusion and contention will increase.
Trend 10: Regulation will become more oppressive. In 2010, the Wild West of the Internet will be brought under the control of the authorities.
Have a trend to add? Use the comments feature of this Web log.
Stephen Arnold, December 6, 2009
Yep, I was paid to be at the Incisive show by Incisive. Nope, I was not paid to write my view of the trends in 2010. Deal with it.
Google and Real Motivation
November 29, 2009
Get ready. The addled goose is going to assert that a former, real, live Google employee may be looking at the tail of the brontosaurus, not at the whole beastie. Exciting for sure.
Venture Beat’s “What Are Google’s Real Motivations behind Chrome OS?” reminded me about the strengths and weaknesses of the received wisdom about Google. On the positive side, comments about Google provide clear statements of obvious Google activities. For example, consider this statement:
Chrome OS is Google’s latest entry into the consumer space. It is designed to be an operating system that runs on customized hardware and provides the user with only a state-of-the art browser running HTML-5 and some plugins.
The comments are given additional authority because the author can state:
As a disclosure, I am a former Google employee, having worked there from 2002 to 2008, but I don’t have any inside information on this project. In fact I didn’t even know of its existence before I left.
That comment makes clear the downside of the received wisdom—Employees of Google do not have much, if any, perspective on the broader technologies that Google has in its bag of tricks. In fact, I sold a copy of my first Google book to a Googler, who shall remain nameless. His comment to me was, “I had no idea.”
There you have it.
Getting a perspective on Google’s billions of dollars of investment in technology is tough. The company’s senior mangers (about 150 when I did my last count) don’t provide much information to employees and even less to those outside the company. Not surprisingly, when Google moves in a new direction with a baby step product / service like Wave or Chrome, the discussion rambles hither and yon about the “real motivations”.
Give me a break.
The motivations for Google’s senior managers have been clearly stated by the company for a long, long time. Here’s my short list:
- Monopolize information, information access, and information services without making the mistakes Microsoft did
- Become a big company, a $100 billion is a target I have heard mentioned a couple of times
- Disrupt and exploit opportunities these disruptions create
- Use basic methods of information control to make it tough for people to see the end game
- Exploit the Google infrastructure (scale, cost performance advantages, rapid deployment, iterative development, etc.).
I probably left out a couple of points, but there is no mystery behind any Google product or service.
Who is the target of Chrome? Forget whether Chrome is good, bad or indifferent as software goes. The point is to poke a small hole in a Microsoft revenue stream. Enough holes means that Microsoft will implode because its need for cash is huge and there are only a couple of solid revenue streams for Microsoft. Microsoft has been trying to cut off Google’s money supply for a decade and so far, Microsoft has failed. Google is using Chrome as one more rapier thrust. If Chrome fails, Google will try another sword. Chrome and other Google products map to the strategy of disruption.
Employees drink Google-doped Kool-Aid and have as tough a time figuring out what Google is doing. Googlers appear to have lots of free but in reality engineers rarely stray far from their core love and competencies. As a result, clumps of Googlers work on project those people enjoy. Asking them to comment on what Dr. Guha is doing is going to elicit a “who’s he” response. I asked about a major Google acquisition and the senior manager replied, “I didn’t know we owned that company.”
To get a better perspective on what Google is going to roll out in the months ahead, you might want to buy a copy of my Google trilogy and read about the specific engineering investments that Google has * made * (not is making) in technology that will severely disrupt a number of business sectors. For telecommunications, Google’s been there and done that. Now telco is a mopping up exercise. I heard a podcaster with a huge audience say that Android would challenge the iPhone. Telcos were not on this person’s radar any longer.
It is important that other business sectors understand the Google technical capabilities. Former Googlers, pundits, mavens, SEO experts, and azure chip consultants are describing the here-and-now. Google’s next-day actions are the ones that are going to make the greatest impact. Have you read a Google technical paper today? Nah, it is easier to read the recycled received wisdom, right?
Stephen Arnold, November 29, 2009
I too must disclose to the Securities & Exchange Commission no less that I was not paid to write this opinion. I bet quite a few pundits writing about what Google did are getting lots of money to explain the past with 20/20 vision. Too bad, Google’s future actions are the ones that are unsolved mysteries.
Blends: The Starbuckization of Microsoft Business Intelligence
November 28, 2009
I avoid Starbuck’s. I speak English, not Starbuckian. When I say “small”, I want the smallest container, not a restatement by an unemployable 20 something in ersatz Klingon. Microsoft is following in Starbuck’s marketing footsteps, or that’s what I concluded after reading “Microsoft Focuses BI Strategy on SQL Server, SharePoint, Excel”. the idea is
The ProClarity technology Microsoft acquired in 2006 as a BI interface for SQL Server, SharePoint and Office has been dropped in favor of the interfaces users know: Excel and SharePoint. The scorecard and dashboard capabilities in PerformancePoint Server will be embedded in the next version of SharePoint. PerformancePoint Server’s financial planning and budgeting capabilities, however, have been cut from the BI product line.
And further down in the article, this passage appears:
With PowerPivot for Excel, users will be able to conduct complex queries by downloading up to 100 million rows of data to their desktop from many data sources, such as IBM, Oracle, Teradata and SQL Server databases, or data feeds from the Web. The information can then be sliced and diced into reports or users can create BI applications on their desktops and share the applications with colleagues by publishing them on SharePoint.
And finally, this comment:
But midmarket companies can get started now with some BI capabilities and no investments, Helm [Microsoft expert / consultant] said. SharePoint 2007 has scorecard and dashboard functionality. Excel has had data analysis services in place since early 2000, and users do have some capabilities to push Excel data out to SharePoint today.
Am I alone in wondering how these names, variants, and combinations are going to improve business intelligence. The language points to three things in my opinion:
- Microsoft is trying to put a little bit of whipped cream in every cup of software
- The features and functions of these products are in flux just as Starbuck’s changes its featured coffee of the day
- The net result is a bunch of ingredients that get blended together with mixed results just like a Starbuck’s super latte triple shot with a dash of nutmeg.
My hunch is that embedded search and information access systems will become the “new” business intelligence hot product in 2010. Who am I watching in this space? MarkLogic looks good. So do Coveo and Exalead. The IBM approach is more like McDonald’s approach to upscale offerings. SAS is struggling in market where math is about as popular as cod liver oil. I’m uncertain about Attivio. I haven’t heard much about their products in the last six months. Lots of excitement in 2010, opines this addled goose.
Stephen Arnold, November 27, 2009
I wish to report to the Department of Commerce that I was not paid in cash or coffee beans to write about what happens when a bunch of names are applied to what is becoming a commodity. I will have to study those bloggers who get paid to write advertorials. That’s a New Year’s resolution for sure, and I don’t need a business intelligence mélange to move forward but I will take a dash of nutmeg.
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