Google Ready to Vie with Amazon Web Services
June 30, 2013
We thought Amazon was looking at Google’s technical presentations and papers, then moving more quickly along paths on which Google was dallying. Now ZDNet informs us that the search giant is stepping up in, “Google Sets Up to Challenge Amazon Web Services.” The article reports:
“Google’s move to make its Compute Engine generally available sets up an duel with Amazon Web Services. Keep in mind that Google is playing catch up, but a recent set of moves should make things interesting.
“On Wednesday, Google took the wraps off the Google Compute Engine. It also moved to support PHP, a popular programming language, with Google App Engine. At Google IO 2013, the search giant had a key track for its cloud platform. Engineers talked persistent disk, redundancy, scaling, storage and pitched developers on spinning up an instance for less than 2 cents an hour.
“Presentations at Google IO included benchmarks showing better performance of Google Cloud Engine relative to ‘an unnamed competitor,’ which was obviously AWS.”
See the article for specifics, but the list of advantages shows Google can pose a strong challenge to AWS. Writer Larry Dignan notes that Google has the engineering experience, infrastructure, credibility, and finances to pursue a “cloud pricing race to the bottom.” Still, it is up to them to show customers why they should make the switch; support, established partnerships, and longevity are on Amazon’s side here. We shall see what happens as the competition continues.
Cynthia Murrell, June 30, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SAP to Set All Cloud Products on HANA Foundation
June 20, 2013
Data firm SAP is rightly proud if its in-memory platform HANA. Things are going so well that ComputerWorldUK now reports, “HANA to Fully Underpin SAP Cloud Products Within ‘One or Two Years’.” The company is using the platform as the basis for all of its cloud solutions, including recent acquisitions like SuccessFactors and Ariba. Writer Derek du Preez tells us:
“Enterprise software giant SAP has unveiled a ‘unified’ cloud strategy this week, which will see its cloud products supported by its in-memory database technology, HANA, within one or two years.
“The move indicates SAP’s dedication to the HANA platform and complements its announcement last week that HANA will now be offered as a third-party managed cloud service. In recent years SAP’s focus on HANA has been the ability to run analytics in real-time, but has since revealed capabilities to run full ERP, CRM and SCM apps in-memory.”
At the top of our minds: How will SAP search stuff in HANA? Which of the second-tier search vendors will the company embrace now that Autonomy, Brainware, Exalead, Fast, Isys, and Vivisimo are off the table? Hmm. . .Trex, perhaps?
SAP supplies enterprise software to over 238,000 customers. Founded 1972 by five former IBM workers, the company is headquartered in Walldorf Germany and maintains locations in over 130 countries.
Cynthia Murrell, June 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Data Ownership in the Cloud
June 20, 2013
Another voice cautions us about oversharing in the cloud. Will we listen? SC Magazine ponders “Online Ownership.” Writer Verity Sleeman laments that users of social sites from Facebook to Soundcloud continue to upload more and more personal information to the servers of others without considering who, exactly, retains legal rights to that data. In fact, for many the sharing begins long, long before they can have anything to say about it. The article charges:
“This is happening right now; devoted mothers are posting pictures of their children on social media sites. What rights will the children have to remove these pictures later in life? The law is very unclear on this point; for example Facebook ‘owns’ everything posted to it.”
It does not help that the pace of modern technology far, far outstrips the plodding of legislation and bureaucracy. Sleeman observes:
“Unfortunately for them, the people that make the rules are basing them on old paradigms, when the risks were different or non-existent. Pity the child who’s entire life is in the public domain and who was never made aware of the consequences.”
Of course, kids are not the only ones for whom personal data strewn through the cloud can be a problem. Sleeman is wise, and practical, enough to know there is no escaping the cloud now. She wouldn’t want to, she says, for she finds the technology useful. We just have to put some thought into the ways we use it. And the ways we let it use us.
Cynthia Murrell, June 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
DataStax and Data Driven Clouds
June 18, 2013
DataStax uses an Apache Cassandra based NoSQL platform, which is widely gaining an advantage over relational database competitors. Silicon Angle covers the latest DataStax news in its article, “DataStax and The New Rules Of Data-Driven Clouds – Breaking the Oracle Chains.”
The article begins:
“Big Data is accessible for any organization – whether big or small, reaching across the spectrum of data demands, in clouds throughout the world – and your best possible data infrastructure can be achieved quickly, easily and with cost-effectiveness with DataStax and Apache Cassandra. In a recent conversation with DataStax CEO Billy Bosworth, we talked about the growing market and infrastructure opportunities that are steadily being realized with their enterprise-ready big data platform.”
Enterprise-ready Big Data is indeed a big market. Others are successfully competing. LucidWorks focuses on Apache Lucene Solr as its architecture, as opposed to a NoSQL platform. In addition to a customizable out-of-the-box solution, LucidWorks also boasts industry leading support and services, which sets it apart from the pack. LucidWorks Big Data is indeed an enterprise-ready Big Data platform, ready to go toe-to-toe with the best that DataStax has to offer.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 18, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
SolrCloud Configuration
June 17, 2013
SolrCloud is a set of new distributed capabilities in Solr. It is useful for setting up a highly available, fault tolerant cluster of Solr servers. Systems Architect has a useful guide for configuring the system. Read their advice in the entry, “Painless Guide to Solr Cloud Configuration.”
The article begins:
“’Cloud’ become very ambiguous term and it can mean virtually anything those days. If you are not familiar with Solr Cloud think about it as one logical service hosted on multiple servers. Distributed architecture helps with scaling, fault tolerance, distributed indexing and generally speaking improves search capabilities. All of that is very exciting and I’m highly impressed how the service is designed but… it’s relatively new product.”
Cloud capability is a highly desirable attribute in enterprise search solutions, one that many service providers are rapidly adopting. LucidWorks builds their value-added enterprise search and Big Data solutions on top of the power of Apache Lucene Solr. However, instead of having to configure everything independently LucidWorks offers capability out-of-the-box as well as an award winning support and services network. Both solutions are available for deployment on-site, in the Cloud, or in hybrid form.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 17, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Enterprise Search Ignorance Can Be Costly
May 20, 2013
Why What You Do Not Can Bite Your Pocketbook. Marketers Have Their Interests Front and Center, Not the Customers’ Interests
A few days ago, I sat through several presentations about enterprise search. The systems struck me as quite similar. The emphasis was placed on providing basic information access to users. For the purpose of this short essay, I will not make distinctions among search vendors which position themselves as providers of analytics, business intelligence, discovery, and Big Data access, among other synonyms for search and information retrieval.
The missing pieces of the cost puzzle can make budget deficits a reality. A happy quack to Vermont’s Department of Information and Innovation. See the discussion to drive down the cost of doing business. States are paragons of fiscal probity.
However, the talks caused me to reflect on what the vendors left out of their presentations.
Here’s a checklist of the omissions in commercial systems which are now being marketed as an alternative to the high profile and expensive solutions available from Dassault, Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, Microsoft, and Oracle, Each of these large enterprise software vendors acquired one or more search systems. Each has taken steps to integrate search with other enterprise software solutions.
The gap the acquisition of such companies as Autonomy, Exalead, and others is now left to smaller and less well know vendors of search. I don’t want to mention these companies by name, but a quick search of Bing or Google will surface many of the firms vying to become the next $100 million vendor of enterprise search systems.
The first omission is a component which can acquire, normalize, and present textual content in a form the search system can process. For newcomers to enterprise search, the content acquisition process can add significantly to the cost of deploying an enterprise search system. Connectors are available from a number of specialist vendors. Most of the search vendors provide some basic tools for acquiring content. Depending on the organization, the vendor provided tools may be adequate for acquiring documents in text or Web pages in HTML. Other document types may be more problematic. A vendor offering a system which requires documents to be in a supported XML format often emphasizes the system’s ability to slice, dice, parse, and perform certain operations with alacrity. What’s omitted is the time, cost, technical expertise, and work flows required to get content into the search system. Cloud based enterprise search solutions and certain lower cost enterprise search systems leave content to the licensee or offer for fee consulting services to assist with these often complex activities.
MuleSoft Readies for IPO for Enterprise SAAS
April 12, 2013
MuleSoft is making headlines for its ability to connect applications on-site and in the Cloud. As it launches into an IPO, big funding is rolling in. Read all of the details in the TechCrunch article, “Readying For An IPO, Enterprise SaaS Integration Platform MuleSoft Raises $37M From NEA, Salesforce And Others.”
The article begins:
“MuleSoft, an integration platform for connecting SaaS and enterprise applications in the cloud and on-premise, has raised $37 million led by NEA . . . This bring the company’s total funding to $81 million. MuleSoft lets organizations integrate their cloud and on-premise applications. The company’s newly launched platform allows for a complete integration platform to enable connectivity to any application, data service or API, across the entire cloud and on-premise continuum.”
For organizations that already have a large infrastructure and need to connect their scattered components, MuleSoft may be a good solution. But, for organizations that are just launching a content management and enterprise search infrastructure, you want to do it right the first time. In this case, LucidWorks would be a great solution. LucidWorks can turn every bit of multi-structured data into a business advantage and is available in the Cloud. Scalable and cost-effective, LucidWorks can help prevent constant restructuring and reassessment of outdated infrastructures.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
RightNow Cloud Update Released
April 12, 2013
DestinationCRM.com informs us, “Oracle Releases RightNow Cloud Service Update.” The latest version seeks to increase community engagement and improve message relevancy. It also includes new ROI reporting tools. Writer Leonard Klie tells us:
“The company said the new release will help businesses increase efficiency, improve transparency of decisions to customers, and reduce follow-ups with automatically generated audit reports that document each step of the decision process, enhance customer satisfaction by only asking contextually relevant questions and providing timely, accurate answers that apply to the customer’s circumstance, and faster response to business changes in policies, legislation, and pricing through updates that can now be managed by business users through a single source document, which gets automatically deployed to the Web.”
The article lists some of the new functionalities: a dynamic message template designer; the iPad-specific mobile agent app; customer portal framework extensions (with an improved extension wizard); a customer-engagement engine; chat ROI reporting; policy automation; social community management (to both highlight and bury specific content); new survey expiration options; and a set of public APIs with which to build rich cloud services. See the write-up for details on each of these.
Oracle hopes the new features will allow its customers to respond more rapidly to an ever-changing business landscape, while making things simpler for their clients’ IT departments. We hope so, too.
Cynthia Murrell, April 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
New Zealand Post Continues with RightNow Adoption
March 22, 2013
New Zealand (NZ) Post has been using the RightNow platform and according to the ZDnet “NZ Post looks to Bolster Oracle RightNow Adoption” plans to expand the usage of the Oracle cloud-based RightNow customer management service. Oracle purchased the CRM software company in 2011. New Zealand postal service began using the RightNow platform as a sales customer relationship management (CRM) tool. They then expanded the product suite so that it covered a variety of different channels such as email and social media. New Zealand Post had a joint venture with DHL but they ended it and bought back the shares of Express Courier. According to the New Zealand Post head of customer channels Russell Stephens, with this new addition New Zealand Post now wants to combine the customer care process for the courier unit with its main business.
“We are currently looking to deploy RightNow across the CourierPost business, and that will give us great benefit in both contact centres that work across our parcel and courier business.”
Stephens has been using the RightNow technology for several years and one of its most notable feats is the ability to give a single view of customer interactions with New Zealand Post across multiple channels.
“There have been instances where a customer was complaining about NZ Post’s services on Twitter, but the company could see that the person was already on a live chat with a staff member and was able to respond to the customer accordingly on Twitter. I think that is a really cool example of when those channels come together. In the old world, that wouldn’t have happened and the customer would just be on the phone with us.”
Seems like NZ Post is already a fan of RightNow technologies and its new relationship with Oracle simply means business as usual.
April Holmes, March 22, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Cloud Service Orchestration Platforms Today
March 21, 2013
If there are two areas even the most fledgling enterprise developer should keep an eye on, they are open source and cloud service. If you combine the two, they converge into a supercharged cloud service orchestration (CSO) platform, and many users are turning that way for their enterprise needs. Sys-Con Media weighs in with their story, “Cloud and Open Source Draw Big Wagers.”
The article states:
“At this moment in time, the leading CSO platform is OpenStack. Dozens of vendors and cloud service providers (CSPs) have piled on this effort, from Rackspace to HP to Dell, and most recently, IBM has announced that they’re going all in as well. Fizzy to be sure, but all Coke, no Mentos. Then there are CloudStack, Eucalyptus, and a few other OpenStack competitors. With all the momentum of OpenStack, it might seem that these open source alternatives are little more than also-rans, doomed to drop further and further behind the burgeoning leader. But there’s more to this story.”
What’s more to the story is that the cloud has yet to be completed vetted and many customers are looking for safer solutions. One that comes to mind is a solution like LucidWorks Search, which can be launched on-site, in the cloud, or as a hybrid. For those who need to ease into the full cloud option, the hybrid functionality adds peace of mind. But for those who are ready to take the plunge, LucidWorks offers distributions through the trusted marketplaces of Microsoft Windows Azure or Amazon EC2.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
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