Navy Cloud Encounters a Storm Front
May 19, 2015
I read “Slow Progress Forces navy to Change Strategies for Cloud, Data Centers.” I have high regard for US Navy technical professionals. ONION router technology and miniature swarm drones have been based on some Navy research.
The write up troubled me. Here’s the first passage I noted this statement:
Culturally, we have to make this shift from a mistaken belief that all our data has to be near us and somewhere where I can do and hug the server, instead of someplace where I don’t know in the cloud. This is a big shift for many within the department. It’s not going to be an easy transition.”
Like most nations’ military forces resources are available in the form of personnel, machines, and money. Staffing also refreshes on a cadence different from some other government entities and many commercial organizations. There are not too many 70 year old nuclear submarine commanders.
The issue about the shift to cloud computing suggests that more than technical hurdles prevent enterprise and mission critical applications from moving to the cloud. I noted this paragraph as well:
While the Navy is open to using commercial or public clouds, the Marine Corps is going its own way. Several Marine Corps IT executives seemed signal that the organization will follow closely to what the Navy is doing, but put their own twist on the initiative. One often talked about example of this is the Marines decision to not move to the Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS) that is part of the Joint Information Environment (JIE) until at least version 2 comes online in 2017. Marine Corps CIO Gen. Kevin Nally said the decision not use the initial versions of JRSS is because Marine Corps’ current security set up is better and cheaper than version 1 or 1.5.
In interpreted the milspeak to mean, “We are doing the cloud but we are focusing on a private cloud, not the public Amazon thing.”
Will enterprise search vendors who emphasize their cloud solution advise their customers about cloud options? Search marketers often tell the prospect many things, and I assume explaining the different approaches to clouds and aggregation will be part of the sales presentation.
Stephen E Arnold, May 19, 2015
Cloud Adoption Is Like a Lead Balloon
May 8, 2015
According to Datamation’s article, “Deflating The Cloud BI Hype Balloon” the mad, widespread adoption of enterprise cloud computing is deflating like helium out of a balloon. While the metaphor is apt for any flash pan fad, it also should be remembered that Facebook and email were considered passing trends. It could be said that when their “newness” wore off they would sink faster than a lead balloon, if we want to continue with the balloon metaphor. If you are a fan of Mythbusters, however, you know that lead balloons, in fact, do float.
What the article and we are aiming here is that like the Mythbusters’ lead balloon, cloud adoption can be troublesome but it will work or float in the end. Datamation points out that the urgency for immediate adoption has faded as security risks and integration with proprietary systems become apparent.
Howard Dresner wrote a report called “Cloud Computing And Business Intelligence” that explain his observations on enterprise cloud demand. Dresner says that making legacy systems adaptable to the cloud will be a continuous challenge, but he stresses that some data does not belong in cloud, while some data needs to be floating about. The challenge is making the perfect hybrid system.
He makes the same apt observation about the lead balloon:
“Dresner, who was a Gartner fellow and has 34 years in the IT industry, takes a longer-term perspective about the integration challenges. “We have to solve the same problems we solved on premise,” he explains, and then adds that these problems “won’t persist forever in the enterprise, but they will take a while to solve.”
In other words, it takes time to assemble, but the lead balloon will keep floating around until the next big thing to replace the cloud. Maybe it will be direct data downloads into the head.
Whitney Grace, May 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
RichRelevance Promises Complete Omnichannel Personalization
May 7, 2015
The article on MarketWatch titled RichRelevance Extends Its Partner Ecosystem to Support True Omnichannel Personalization predicts the consequences of San Francisco-based company RichRelevance’s recent announcement that they will be amping up partner support in order to improve the continuity of the customer experience across “web, mobile, call center and store.” The article explains what is meant by omnichannel personalization and why it is so important,
“Personalization has emerged as the most important strategic imperative for global businesses,” said Eduardo Sanchez, CEO of RichRelevance. “Our partner ecosystem provides our customers with a unique resource to support the implementation of different components of the Relevance Cloud in their business, as well as customize personalization according to the highly specific demands of their own businesses and consumer base.” Gartner predicts that 89% of companies plan to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience by 2016…”
The Relevance Cloud is available for Richrelevance partners and includes such core capabilities as Pre-built personalization apps for recommendations and search, the Open Innovation Platform for Build, and Relevance in Store for the reported 90% of sales that occur in-store. The announcement ensures that the collaboration Richrelevance emphasizes with its partners will really range all areas of customer engagement.
Chelsea Kerwin, May 7, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
EnterpriseJungle Launches SAP-Based Enterprise Search System
May 4, 2015
A new enterprise search system startup is leveraging the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, we learn from “EnterpriseJungle Tames Enterprise Search” at SAP’s News Center. The company states that their goal is to make collaboration easier and more effective with a feature they’re calling “deep people search.” Writer Susn Galer cites EnterpriseJungle Principal James Sinclair when she tells us:
“Using advanced algorithms to analyze data from internal and external sources, including SAP Jam, SuccessFactors, wikis, and LinkedIn, the applications help companies understand the make-up of its workforce and connect people quickly….
“Who Can Help Me is a pre-populated search tool allowing employees to find internal experts by skills, location, project requirements and other criteria which companies can also configure, if needed. The Enterprise Q&A tool lets employees enter any text into the search bar, and find experts internally or outside company walls. Most companies use the prepackaged EnterpriseJungle solutions as is for Human Resources (HR), recruitment, sales and other departments. However, Sinclair said companies can easily modify search queries to meet any organization’s unique needs.”
EnterpriseJungle users manage their company’s data through SAP’s Lumira dashboard. Galer shares Sinclair’s example of one company in Germany, which used EnterpriseJungle to match employees to appropriate new positions when it made a whopping 3,000 jobs obsolete. Though the software is now designed primarily for HR and data-management departments, Sinclair hopes the collaboration tool will permeate the entire enterprise.
Cynthia Murrell, May 4, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Smart Software in the Cloud
May 3, 2015
If you have a need for analytics in the cloud, you may want to review the list of vendors in “10+ Cloud Machine Learning Platforms.” The list, assembled by a mid tier consulting firm, is eclectic. Amazon, Google, IBM Watson, and Microsoft are listed. Also included are services from Wise and BigML. The services are described with one major omission: The degree of technical expertise required. I assume that when one wants to “do” a machine learning project, the requisite statistical and programming skills are at hand. The challenge to the customer of these services may be significant.
Stephen E Arnold, May 3, 2015
Amazon: The Digital Cost Cutting Quest
April 30, 2015
Nope, Amazon is not playing games. With its cloud services getting some love, the company wants to wallow in affection. I read “Amazon Pays $20M-$50M for ClusterK, the Startup That Can Run Apps on AWS at 10% of the Regular Price.” Who knows if the 10 percent figure is fudge.
Who cares?
I believe that Amazon’s cloud competitors will perk up. Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Microsoft have big cloud plans. Microsoft advertises a cloud that endures tough weather. Okay.
But the issue is cost. Microsoft gives stuff away. HP does the mitosis thing. IBM pumps out PR for Watson authored cookbooks AND quantum computing chips.
Amazon, on the other hand, continues to push for the undisputed crown as the digital Wal-Mart. My hunch is that price competition may be more important than the cloud prices its competitors are offering. Perception is important. Do you want lower costs or free Word, two HPs, and one collection of IBM financial reports. I go with lower costs.
Stephen E Arnold, April 30, 2015
Cerebrant Discovery Platform from Content Analyst
April 29, 2015
A new content analysis platform boasts the ability to find “non-obvious” relationships within unstructured data, we learn from a write-up hosted at PRWeb, “Content Analyst Announces Cerebrant, a Revolutionary SaaS Discovery Platform to Provide Rapid Insight into Big Content.” The press release explains what makes Cerebrant special:
“Users can identify and select disparate collections of public and premium unstructured content such as scientific research papers, industry reports, syndicated research, news, Wikipedia and other internal and external repositories.
“Unlike alternative solutions, Cerebrant is not dependent upon Boolean search strings, exhaustive taxonomies, or word libraries since it leverages the power of the company’s proprietary Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)-based learning engine. Users simply take a selection of text ranging from a short phrase, sentence, paragraph, or entire document and Cerebrant identifies and ranks the most conceptually related documents, articles and terms across the selected content sets ranging from tens of thousands to millions of text items.”
We’re told that Cerebrant is based on the company’s prominent CAAT machine learning engine. The write-up also notes that the platform is cloud-based, making it easy to implement and use. Content Analyst launched in 2004, and is based in Reston, Virginia, near Washington, DC. They also happen to be hiring, in case anyone here is interested.
Cynthia Murrell, April 29, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
EnterpriseJungle Launches SAP-Based Enterprise Search System
April 27, 2015
A new enterprise search system startup is leveraging the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, we learn from “EnterpriseJungle Tames Enterprise Search” at SAP’s News Center. The company states that their goal is to make collaboration easier and more effective with a feature they’re calling “deep people search.” Writer Susn Galer cites EnterpriseJungle Principal James Sinclair when she tells us:
“Using advanced algorithms to analyze data from internal and external sources, including SAP Jam, SuccessFactors, wikis, and LinkedIn, the applications help companies understand the make-up of its workforce and connect people quickly….
“Who Can Help Me is a pre-populated search tool allowing employees to find internal experts by skills, location, project requirements and other criteria which companies can also configure, if needed. The Enterprise Q&A tool lets employees enter any text into the search bar, and find experts internally or outside company walls. Most companies use the prepackaged EnterpriseJungle solutions as is for Human Resources (HR), recruitment, sales and other departments. However, Sinclair said companies can easily modify search queries to meet any organization’s unique needs.”
EnterpriseJungle users manage their company’s data through SAP’s Lumira dashboard. Galer shares Sinclair’s example of one company in Germany, which used EnterpriseJungle to match employees to appropriate new positions when it made a whopping 3,000 jobs obsolete. Though the software is now designed primarily for HR and data-management departments, Sinclair hopes the collaboration tool will permeate the entire enterprise.
Cynthia Murrell, April 27, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Enterprise is a Jungle Search
April 16, 2015
The word collaboration has become one of those corporate power words like “synergy” and “KISS method.” Many people groan inwardly at new ways to “collaborate,” because it usually means another tool they have to learn and will fall out of use in under a year. With the myriad of ways to collaborate digitally, getting any actual collaborating done is difficult. The SAP News blog says enterprise collaboration might be getting a little easier in the article, “EnterpriseJungle Tames Enterprise Search.”
EnterpriseJungle created an application with the SAP Hana Cloud Platform to help companies connect quickly find and connect with experts within or outside their company. The Principal at EnterpriseJungle states that a company’s people search is vital tool to locate and harness information.
“ ‘Large companies are desperate to get a handle on understanding and accessing the expertise available to them at any given moment,’ said Sinclair. ‘Our solutions help companies solve fundamental questions like how do we find the people who are fantastic at what they do, but only known to their closest core group of co-workers? And, how do we easily bring their knowledge and expertise to the front line with minimal extra work? If we can help get information to employees that need it, we’re fundamentally making their lives easier, and making the company’s life easier.’ “
After a description of how EnterpriseJungle’s works and its usefulness for companies, it makes a claim to offer Google-like search results. While it might be a people search tool, the application is capable of much more. It can help people locate experts, track down skill sets, and even improve IT relations.
EnterpriseJungle is hitting on a vital tool for companies. People search has a severe need for improvement and this might be the start of a new enterprise niche market.
Whitney Grace, April 16, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Mobile Office 365 Usage on the Rise
April 16, 2015
A recent study by harmon.ie has found that Mobile Office 365 is growing quickly among its users. Mobile is a huge consideration for all software companies, and now the data is proving that mobile is the go-to for even heavy-hitting work and enterprise applications. Read more in the AppsTechNews article, “The state of mobile Office 365 usage in the workplace – and what it means for SharePoint.”
The article begins with the research:
“24% of harmon.ie mobile users are now using mobile Office 365 in the cloud, compared to 18% six months ago. Not surprisingly, the most popular activity conducted by business users on mobile devices was online and offline document access, according to 81% of the vote. 7% most frequently use their mobile devices to add a SharePoint site, while 4% prefer to favourite documents for later offline access.”
Retrieval is still proven to be the most common mobile function, as devices are still not designed well for efficient input. To keep up with future developments regarding mobile use in the enterprise, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com. Stephen E. Arnold has made a career out of following all things search, and his SharePoint feed is an accessible place to stay tuned in to the latest SharePoint developments.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 16, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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