Microsoft Comes on Strong at July Partner Conference
July 22, 2010
Well, it was not Thai kickboxing, but it was close. The July partner conference touted the cloud, the losers at Apple characterized as “Apple’s Vista”, and that old time lock in religion.
It seems that Microsoft is anything but intimidated by the iPhone4 and ready to put all their collective weight behind cloud computing. That was the message it appears the IT giant wants out there if the article titled Microsoft Talks Up Cloud, Slaps Google, Apple in the InternetNews.com is any indication.
COO Kevin Turner was unwavering in his emphasis of the cloud theme and anyone that attended the conference couldn’t miss the fact that was to be the major point. He even went on to explain that the firm is ‘rebooting’ as they move more and more toward cloud technology.
He was by all accounts firm in his emphasis, even going so far as to say he understands the process will necessitate major changes for Microsoft partners. He also mentioned the fact that Bing’s share for the search market has gown by 51% since the Google rival debuted.
With partners paying for the privilege of becoming a “real” partner, the showmanship and bravado are exactly with those with dollar signs in their eyes want to hear.
Rob Starr, July 22, 2010
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Cloud, Semantics, and Cancer Fighting
July 10, 2010
There has been some progress that shares semantic Web and cloud technology in detecting lung cancer. The National Cancer Institute’s Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) and the non profit Canary foundation are working together here. This reported in Semanticweb.com.
The preliminary tests have been so encouraging in fact, the combined effort is looking to move forward and get NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to analyze the results. The project is hoping to use the computer technology to analyze at least some of the results that it has, and for humans to be able to collaborate on the collected results to see if cloud computing can someday combat lung cancer.
This is obviously something that’s starting out in its infancy stage, but to even consider that a dent can be made in the 157,300 lung cancer deaths that are forecast for 2010 using a computer driven approach is encouraging.
Rob Starr, July 10, 2010
Vertical Search: Music and the Potential for a Stubbed Toe
July 9, 2010
“Search Engines Turn to Music” presents a very post modern view of vertical search. A vertical search system would have been in 1980 a commercial database with an editorial policy. The idea was that a particular database like Investext would have information in it that was homogeneous. Investext, for instance, contained analysts reports chopped into 3 Kb pages. When I needed information from an investment firm’s analyst reports, I would use Investext. I liked the product so much, ABI/INFORM teamed with Investext to explain when to use each commercial database. Today, search engines have rediscovered an editorial policy. As the write up in Stuff makes clear, the 2010 approach includes some new wrinkles.
For me, the most interesting comment in the write up was:
According to Microsoft, 10 percent of all Internet search queries are entertainment-related, with music lyrics alone accounting for 70 percent of those searches.
Where there are users, there will be monetization opportunities in the post Napster world. I also noted this segment:
BPI, the trade group representing UK record labels, raised the stakes in June by issuing a takedown notice to Google, demanding it remove links to 17 songs from third-party websites it deems infringing, such as RapidShare and MegaUpload.
Yikes. More legal hassles for the Google. What’s clear is that cloud based, for fee music and rich media services are the future.
Useful article, but I am not sure that search engines have turned to music. My view is that search engines are finding that some of the old tricks still have the capacity to interest users. The vertical angle is important. A copyright misstep could lead to a bone crushing collision with the pavement. And what about the bruises when giants collide in the contentious rich media market?
Stephen E Arnold, July 9, 2010
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Free File Conversion in the Cloud
July 8, 2010
It wasn’t long ago converting WAV files to MP3 was the only real stumbling block to juggling all the different downloads available.
Things have changed with Online-Convert.com, and it’s good to find one place where you can find a host of easy and quick conversions covering the gamut from audio to video and even document conversions. Examples range from flipping a Word file into plain ASCII or more exotic,
Online-convert.com makes it easy when you’re looking for the right format with a series of easy to use and read categories and drop down menus in each one that make it simple to get find the exact conversion you need.
Although most of the conversions are topical and quite often necessary, independent contractors and some system administrators may find the site a must-have service. There are some downsides; for example, the conversions for ebooks seem almost redundant with the advent of Kindle and other new ebook options, but that doesn’t mean this site isn’t worth bookmarking for all the other useful conversions there.
Rob Starr, July 8, 2010
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EMC Snags Greenplum
July 7, 2010
Short honk: In “EMC To Acquire Greenplum In Data Warehousing, Cloud Play,” I learned that a quite interesting information technology nestles in the grasp of a really big outfit. EMC is making moves to keep revenues flowing. According to the write up:
Pat Gelsinger, president and COO for EMC Information Infrastructure Products, said in a statement that Greenplum’s massively-parallel, scale-out architecture, along with its self-service consumption model, has made it a leader in the data warehouse industry’s shift toward ‘big data’ analytics. “Greenplum’s market-leading technology combined with EMC’s virtualized Private Cloud infrastructure provides customers, today, with a best-of-breed solution for tomorrow’s ‘big-data’ challenges,” Gelsinger said.
What’s a Greenplum?
Greenplum is the pioneer of Enterprise Data Cloud™ solutions for large-scale data warehousing and analytics, providing customer with flexible access to all their data for business intelligence and analytics. Greenplum offers industry-leading performance at a low cost for companies managing terabytes to petabytes of data. Data-driven businesses around the world, including NASDAQ OMX, NYSE Euronext, Reliance Communications, Skype and Fox Interactive Media/MySpace, have adopted the Greenplum Database to support their mission-critical business functions.
The Beyond Search view: Good idea. The challenge will be to cope with other outfits with the same idea. In the last six months, Amazon has begun to have an impact in cloud services. Others are firing up their hot air balloons in a race through the clouds. Can EMC make this acquisition a key differentiator? Understanding of the cloud in some businesses is growing but the buzzwords may add friction to some procurements.
Stephen E Arnold, July 7, 2010
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Exalead and Mobile Search
July 5, 2010
Podcast Interview with Paul Doscher, Part 4
Exalead’s Paul Doscher talks about Exalead and mobile search on the July 5, 2010 ArnoldIT Beyond Search podcast. Exalead, now part of the large French software and services company Dassault, continues to ramp up its search, content processing, and search enabled applications. (Now part of Dassault, one of the world’s leading software and services engineering firms acquired Exalead earlier this year. You can read about the acquisition in “Exalead Acquired by Dassault” and “Exalead and Dassault Tie Up, Users Benefit.”
In the July 2010 podcast, Mr. Doscher talks about Exalead and mobile search, one of the hottest sectors in information retrieval. Exalead has assisted one of its clients (Urbanizer.com) has developed an innovative method of locating information.
The Exalead user experience approach makes it possible to deliver access via a range of mobile devices for consumer and special purpose access.
You can listen to the podcast on the ArnoldIT.com Web site. More information about Exalead is available from www.exalead.com.
The ArnoldIT podcast series extends the Search Wizards Speak series of interview beyond text into rich media. Watch this blog for announcements about other rich media programs from the professionals who move information retrieval beyond search.
Stephen E Arnold, July 5, 2010
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Hadoop de Loop in the Cloud
June 30, 2010
Navigate to “Cloudera Goes Enterprise with New Hadoop Offering.” Is this another cloud thing? Not in my little goose pond. Cloudera is positioning itself as a platform vendor. And a platform vendors offers lots of hand holding and neck rubbing services. My view is that Cloudera has made a smart move. For me, the most important point in the write up is:
For Cloudera’s part, Olson [Cloudera wiazard] said it believes companies want–and are willing to pay for–user and group authentication and roles, visual tools for managing large numbers of data feeds into a cluster, and other management tools that are important for conventional IT staff with critical applications who need easy-to-use dashboards. But Cloudera isn’t straying from its open-source roots.
Clever stuff and important because Cloudera can slap on other functions and features. The opportunity to disrupt high end vendors is a big one. That’s one reason why I am helping to organize the presentations at the Lucene Revolution conference which will focus on Lucene and Solr. I want to see what the momentum is and try to figure out where the shock waves will impact.
Stephen E Arnold, June 30, 2010
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Predicting the Weather: Risky at Picnics, Even Riskier for Cloud Computing
June 21, 2010
I am parked in Madrid, Spain, waiting to give my talk about real time content. I am catching up with the news from the “real journalists”. I just read “Why Microsoft’s Hybrid Cloud Threatens Google.” I flashed back to 1958. In the Midwest, the local weather person was Bill Houlihan. He explained the weather each evening on the 6 pm news, and he almost always got it wrong. He started a chicken restaurant with a 30 foot plastic chicken on the roof and he got that wrong too. The restaurant failed as quickly as his weather forecasts.
Predicting the weather is risky, particularly if you are planning a picnic. Predicting the climate for cloud computing is even riskier. Remember that giant plastic chicken. That artifact is probably still intact, resting in a junk yard somewhere outside of Dunlop, Illinois.
Risk in weather prediction and plastic chickens, the associations—the Forbes article triggered these. For me the most important passage was:
Cloud computing has become a key piece of an enterprise’s IT strategy, typically used in a hybrid (cloud plus on-premise) model of computing that offers customers the best of both worlds: the ability to keep their data on-premise, while leveraging the cloud’s accelerated software development speeds and lower costs by eliminating the need to invest in ongoing on-premise hardware and software. A common example of hybrid is being able to develop applications and test them in the cloud before releasing them onto internal networks. his scenario gives Microsoft (MSFT – news – people ) a major advantage over cloud-only hosted service providers Google ( GOOG– news – people ) and Amazon, one that creates great opportunities for Microsoft’s broader partner ecosystem. Developers can use the same development tools, frameworks and execution environment for either cloud or on-premise applications. Developers can build a single application that leverages the cloud’s scalability for transactional processing while supporting the security of on-premise data storage.
This addled goose is not going to dispute the interest organizations are showing in cutting costs, increasing reliability, and gaining some breathing room from the crazy hot fixes that flood from vendors. Timesharing in its many guises is not new. Today’s economics force organizations to find ways to keep systems up and running, manage available technical staff, and get back online when one of today’s bargain basement solutions crashes.
My concern is that cloud computing comes in different flavors. Most organizations are in scramble mode. There is experimentation, parallel testing, and trials. These include experiments with the Walmart of cloud computing, roll-your-own systems, half baked solutions from the math club, and arabesques on these methods. The idea is that a specific organization knows the one best way to deal with the untenable status quo of information technology is like a weather forecast—probably incorrect. There is one added benefit to this type of prognostication about the future. The observations become today’s big plastic chicken.
Source: http://www.springchickensale.com/images/sign_chicken_sm.jpg
The idea that Microsoft has a slam dunk is interesting as an example of a marketing pitch based on a cloud computing weather prediction. No computing solution has delivered pain free information technology in my experience. Methods have upsides and downsides. My hunch is that cloud solutions will become as tough to figure out as the solution to the BP oil spill.
Opinions are to be encouraged. Predicting the weather and putting up a big plastic chicken make it easy to spot enthusiastic marketing. Will the future unfold with Microsoft dominating the hybrid cloud? I don’t know. What is clear is that lots of predators are chasing this “next big thing”. I don’t need marketing to confuse me. Do you? I just learned it will be sunny and bright in Madrid today. It is now cloudy and it looks like rain.
Stephen E Arnold, June 21, 2010
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Some Microsoft Cloud Pricing
June 1, 2010
Search in the cloud has been available from Blossom.com for years. Other search and content processing vendors will or have already followed this trajectory. Amazon’s cloud service offers a broad range of services and what strikes me as quite aggressive price points—if you can locate them. Some of Amazon’s prices for EC2 are clearly stated. Others, like AWS, are more difficult to pin down.
A mystery to me was Microsoft’s pricing for its cloud services. Some information may appear in “Windows Azure Content Delivery Network Pricing Details.” Here’s the key passage:
“We’re announcing pricing for the Windows Azure CDN for all billing periods that begin after June 30, 2010. The following three billing meters and rates will apply for the CDN: $0.15 per GB for data transfers from European and North American locations. $0.20 per GB for data transfers from other locations. $0.01 per 10,000 transactions,” a member of the Windows Azure team revealed.
I am not sure how these prices compare to other vendors’. For example, what’s a “transaction”? And what is a “location”? Updates as we find information. The March 2010 information here may provide some context.
Stephen E Arnold, June 1, 2010
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Amazon Winning in the Cloud
May 18, 2010
Amazon is an unusual company. I find its use of open source technology fascinating. At one time – and maybe still – the very core of Amazon ran on commercial products. “Amazon Stealing the Cloud” suggests that Amazon is moving in directions I have not fully appreciated. The write up presents some facts and assertions about Amazon’s presence in the cloud. The sources range from a survey of developers to the MBAs and their Excel spreadsheets at an investment bank. Since the excitement about certain financial activities, I have to be upfront and say, “I am not so sure about those bank estimates.” Your view of what’s in the burgoo may vary, and that’s healthy. You might have a pet azure chip consultant in your corner like a highly paid cut man at boxing match. As long as you pay, you get that effective medical care.
Among the points in the write up I noted were these:
- Recovery.gov runs on Amazon
- Amazon hosts 365,000 Web sites
- Amazon is in the commodity business.
Let’s assume these assertions are accurate. Amazon may be out Googling Google. Many of Amazon’s services have been referenced in Google’s technical papers or its frequently dismissed patent applications. What Amazon is able to do is execute. This says a lot about Amazon and perhaps even more about Google.
Stephen E Arnold, May 18, 2010
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