More Funny Numbers: Enterprise 2.0
June 9, 2008
The Industry Standard’s article “Momentum, Some Confusion Mark Enterprise 2.0” does a good job explaining why buzz words are dragging information technology managers into a quagmire. You can find the very good article here. A number of points jumped out at me. I want to highlight two that struck me as particularly important and offer one observation.
The first point is this comment bit of information in the middle of the write up:
A recent study by the research firm AIIM found that while nearly half of respondents said Enterprise 2.0 is “imperative or significant to corporate goals and objectives,” 74 percent said they have “only a vague familiarity or no clear understanding” of the concept.
I found this downright amazing.
The second point is this fact about a market that people have “only a vague familiarity or no clear understanding” of:
And one prediction has the space ready to explode. Forrester Research recently said that enterprise spending on technologies such as social-networking platforms and RSS feeds will grow to US$4.6 billion by 2013, from $764 million in 2008.
That’s a lot of revenue from a concept most people, including this rural Kentucky boy, don’t understand.
My observation: economic pressures are forcing conference organizers to go to great lengths to create buzz. In a deteriorating economic climate, I think it is attendees zero. Conference marketers 2.
Stephen Arnold, June 10, 2008
Enterprise Search Endnote
May 22, 2008
A surprised squawk from the Beyond Search goose. In the end note (the wrap up talk for the two day conference about enterprise search in New York City), the data bunny made a brief and long-awaited appearance. The introduction to the end note made a note that her name was henceforth ‘search bunny’. After the laughter subsided, I made these points to summarize the more than 36 presentation dilivered over the 14 hours of the formal program.
The Data Bunny makes an appearance
First, this conference marked the first major meeting about enterprise that discussed ways to improve usability of existing systems and move beyond key word retrieval. The point was that most enterprise search users don’t feel comfortable sticking words and phrases in a search box and then perusing lists of results to see if the magic answer has been delivered.
Second, research data from my work and other industry experts substantiate the need for alternative interfaces. Graphics, although tasty eye candy, are not the answer. Information must be provided in a manner that meets the needs of individual users and the work task at hand. Forcing a laundry list of results on every user is out of step with today’s information environment.
Third, interfaces can use mobile functionality such as that available from Coveo’s mobile mail search service. An interface can combine a search box with a list of topics and categories like the one on the Oracle Technology Network’s Web site which is based on Siderean Software’s technology. Google has disclosed in a patent application an interface that presents a dossier or report. Instead of a list of topics, the output includes facts about the topic. One feature is a hot link to a map showing the location of the subject. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
To wrap up the conference, the audience was challenged to:
- Demand more from vendors. Passivity, which allows the vendor to lead the licensee, has to give way to the licensee getting the vendor to deliver the solution the organization needs to succeed.
- Recognize that Google’s more than 9,500 Google Search Appliance licensees are buying into the idea that complex search is expensive, expensive, and prone to problems. Simplicity, stability, and extensibility are more important than 1,001 meaningless features.
- Embrace the opportunity to take a clean sheet of paper and redeine search in terms of information access.
The novelty of typing in two words and getting some results has given way to a greater appetite to solutions that work in the context of a work task.
After the formal presentation, several of the more than 300 in the audience, posed some questions. Here’s a summary of the questions that were asked more than one time:
Question: What’s the future of metadata and taxonomies?
Answer: Metadata is becoming more important. News types of metadata — who changed what in a document when? Who were the recipients of the document? — and similar trans-meta types of tagging are the next wave in metadata. So, the work associated with metadata is in its infancy.
Question: Why do you say ‘Search is dead?’
Answer: That’s shorthand for saying, “Most users don’t want to be shackled to a search box. Some users will want the search box as a primary means of access. A larger number of users want options for access. The search box, therefore, can no longer be the primary access vehicle in my opinion.
Question: Why did you mention only three companies?
Answer: I speak extemporaneously. I don’t read my talks. The examples–Coveo, Google, and Oracle–seemed relevant when I put together my examples 30 minutes before my remarks. I would like to have time to name many other vendors. I track the search and content processing technology of more than 50 organizations. In 20 minutes, there are hard limits on what I can do.
Question: Are you paid for these types of remarks?
Answer: I charge for everything. If organizations did not pay me, I would not be able to fund my research, pay for dog food, or buy airline tickets. As a consultant, my product is my time. Therefore, to use my time means that the conference organizer has to pay me.
Stephen Arnold, May 21, 2008
Enterprise Search: The Good, the Bad, the Downright Ugly
May 17, 2008
Author’s Note: This essay is the basis for my conference end note, which I deliver on May 21, 2008. The venue is Information Today’s Enterprise Search Summit. The program committee has slotted me in the anchor position to provide an overview of what the more than 40 speakers said and to keep some attendees from rushing to the airport. The idea is that I am controversial and some vendors want to hear what I say so they can get the attorneys organized to write me threatening letters. My actual remarks are based on the essay below.
Yes, I am wearing bunny rabbit ears. I was going to put on my bikini, but at my lawyer told me, “You can be sued for assault.” I am wearing the ears.
The reason? A big wig at a large, really ethical pharmaceutical company–maybe that’s an oxymoron– told me that my 1980 picture on my Web log here was “unprofessional” and “disturbing”. Well, in 1980, when I talked to a group of executives, online search and data were unknown. Business executives are conservative, like the Roman ruler Caligula’s advisors. The ears broke the ice. Anyway, I’m not the one in hot water with the FDA. Maybe those guys should wear them?
Today (May 21, 2008) everyone in this room plus your friends and your children use online information services. A fat, old guy wearing bunny rabbit ears makes zero difference. You saw more interesting sights in Greenwich Village on your way to dinner, correct?
What is different about search today? It’s ubiquitous. Also, it is essentially unchanged. Here’s a screen shot of a system that displays information in an interesting way. Here’s a Google report. Sorry it’s in black and white, but I am a persona non grata at Google. I have to scour the open source literature to find out that the Googlers also know traditional search isn’t going to cut it moving forward.
What I learned at the conference, and I admit I could not sit through every session. I had to poke my head in and out of sessions. Feel free to push back if you disagree. Even better, I will pay you $2.00 (that’s my usual $1.00 adjusted for inflation.)
The Good
The speakers who prepared–Sue Feldman and Martin White–made the conference worthwhile. The speakers who recycled product literature and said, “I’m giving a product review” made the conference useful. I like product reviews. Also, I like the Google Search Appliance, probably because my son, Erik, would make my life miserable if I didn’t effuse Google goodness. I also like the systems I profile in my Beyond Search study, which you can buy from Frank Gilbane, a content impresario.
The Bad
Man, infomercials. I sit in a session. The speaker has an affiliation unrelated to a search vendor. The talk is the vendor’s sales pitch. These are a total waste of time, and the speakers should be sent to Toastmasters International or a remedial speech class. My view is that there are more of these “planted talks” than ever before. It’s a disturbing trend that I have seen at other conferences this year sponsored by other companies and with independent program committees. Not good.
The Ugly
I want to spend the remaining time on five points. Then I will pay $2.00 for a question. You can start thinking about the errors in my analysis now, and I don’t have any reluctance to let you pin me to the wall for my opinions.
- Talking about semantic search, Web 3.0, and text mining does not a business make. In fact, the whole PR blitz about “better search” leaves me cold. It’s not that these buzzwords don’t mean something. They do. The systems aren’t a leap forward.
- Enterprise search is a problem. The vendors can’t and won’t talk about their disasters. The licensees are often prohibited by the license terms from saying negative things about a system. My research, Jane Russell’s in Paris, Sinequa’s, and studies summarized for me by Martin White make one point: 60 to 70 percent of the users of Big Name search systems are dissatisfied. That’s not going to change as long as these companies sell systems that date from the late 1980s. On my blog I posted the tag lines for about two dozen vendors. The average age of the companies? 1997. Nothing new, folks. Nothing new.
- Google is a big deal in the enterprise, and I am getting tired of hearing people dismiss the company’s presence as trivial or an aberration. My sources reveal that Google is THE largest enterprise search vendor. The company has more than 9,500 GSA licensees. The company is struggling to deal with inquiries about geo spatial, hosted services, and other cloud-based products. Does Google tell me this? No, Google’s Larry Page remembers that he squabbled with me in 2000 at the Boston Search Engine Meeting, and he wants me put in the Smithsonian’s computing exhibit, locked in with the UNIVAC.
- Costs are not just a problem. The costs associated with enterprise search are going to be a major problem going forward. Data transformation can consume as much as 30 percent of an IT department’s budget. The customization costs of some enterprise search systems are so high that licensees can’t make a system better. Take a look at the pre-acquisition Verity. It was a services firm, not a search vendor. Now other vendors are going for this high margin business. Some enterprise search systems are designed to sell consulting.
- Scaling ain’t us. Most of the vendors whose systems I examine for my various reports and studies don’t scale gracefully. What does this mean? It means that a licensee has to throw hardware at a problem, figure out how to tune a complex system on a complicated Frankenstein infrastructure, and figure out how to make these changes without trashing the index and going back to square one. Some systems scale. Siderean, Exalead, Coveo, ISYS. I can’t name them all. What’s important is that none of the Big Names scale gracefully. Up-and-comers, profiled in Beyond Search–my new study–do a better job of this.
Wrap Up
So what did I learn? The marketing frenzy that infects so much of our information world has reached enterprise search. The vendors and their financial challenges make it tough to get the straight dope on search systems. Finally, people who volunteer to speak at conferences often spend little time creating a presentation that will knock the attendees’ socks off.
What did I like? I like the sector. It’s booming. There’s a lot a interesting stuff out there. Cluuz.com. Silobreaker. Look to the newer systems. Oh, don’t ignore Googzilla. Think surf on Googzilla.
Stephen Arnold, May 18, 2008
Boston Search Engine Meeting, Day Two
April 30, 2008
The most important news on Day Two of Infonortics’ Boston Search Engine Meeting was the announcement of the “best paper awards” for 2008. The Evvie–named in honor of Ev Brenner–one of the leaders in online information systems and functions–was established after Mr. Brenner’s death in 2006. Mr. Brenner served on the program committee for the Boston Search Engine Meeting since its inception almost 20 years ago. Mr. Brenner had two characteristics that made his participation a signature feature of each year’s program. He was willing to tell a speaker or paper author to “add more content” and after a presentation, Mr. Brenner would ask a presenter one or more penetrating questions that helped make a complex subject more clear.
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the Evvie is an attempt to keep Mr. Brenner’s push for excellence squarely in the minds of the speakers and the conference attendees.
This year’s winners are:
- Best paper: Charles Clarke, University of Waterloo. His paper “XML Retrieval: Problems and Potential” explained that XML (Extensible Markup Language) is no panacea. Properly used, XML systems create new ways to make search more useful to users. He received a cash prize and an engraved Evvie award.
- Runner up: Richard Brath, Oculus, for his paper “Search, Sense-Making and Visual User Interfaces”. In this paper, Mr. Brath demonstrated that user interface becomes as important as the underlying content processing functions for search. He received an engraved Evvie award.
Left: Richard Brath (Oculus), center: Stephen E. Arnold (ArnoldIT.com), right: Charles Clarke (University of Waterloo).
This year’s judges were Dr. Liz Liddy, Syracuse University, Dr. David Evans, Just Systems (Tokyo), and Sue Feldman, IDC Content Technologies Group. Dr. Liddy heads the Center for Natural Language Processing. Dr. Evans, founder of Clairvoyance, is one of the foremost authorities on search. Ms. Feldman is one of the leading analysts in the search, content processing, and information access market sector. Congratulations to this year’s Evvie winners.
Boston Search Engine Meeting, Day One
April 29, 2008
The Infonortics’ meeting attracts technologists and senior managers involved in search, content processing and information access. For the full program and an overview of the topics, navigate to http://www.infonortics.com.
Summaries of the talks and versions of the PowerPoints will be available on the Infonortics’ Web site on or before May 2, 2008. I will post a news item when I have the specific link.
Background
This conference draws more PhDs per square foot than a Harvard coffee shop. Most of the presentations were delightful if you enjoy equations with your latte. In the last two years, talks about key word search have yielded to discussions about advanced text manipulation methods. What’s unique about this program is that the invited presenters talk with the same enthusiasm an undergraduate in math feels when she has been accepted into MIT’s PhD physics program.
The are often spiced with real world descriptions of products that anyone can use. A highlight was the ISYS Search Software combined useful tips with a system that worked–no PhD required.
Several other observations are warranted:
- Key word search and long lists of results are no longer enough. To be useful, a system has to provide suggestions, names people, categories, and relevance thermometers
- An increasing appetite for answers combined with a discovery function.
- Systems must be usable by the people who need the system to perform a task or answer a question.
Chatter at the Breaks
Chatter at the breaks was enthusiastic. In the conversations to which I was party on Monday, three topics seemed to attract some attention.
First, the acquisition of Fast Search by Microsoft was the subject of considerable speculation. Comments about the reorganization of Microsoft search under the guidance of John Lervik, one of Fast Search’s founders sparked this comment from one attendee: “Organizing search at Microsoft is going to be a very tough job.” One person in this informal group said, “I think some if not all of the coordination may be done from Fast Search’s offices in Massachusetts and Norway.” The rejoinder offered by one individual was, “That’s going to be really difficult.”
Second, the search leader Autonomy’s share price concerned one group of attendees. The question was related to the decline in Autonomy share price on the heels of a strong quarterly report. No one had any specific information, but I was asked about the distribution of Autonomy’s revenue; that is, how much from core search and how much from Autonomy’s high profile units. My analysis–based on a quick reading of the quarterly report press announcements — suggests that Autonomy has some strong growth from the Zantaz unit and in other sectors such as rich media. Autonomy search plays a supporting role in these fast-growth sectors. On that basis, Autonomy may be entering a phase where the bulk of its revenue may come from system sales where search is an inclusion, not the super charger.
Finally, there was much discussion about the need to move beyond key word search. Whether the adjustment is more sophistication “under the hood” with the user seeing suggestions or an interface solution with a range of graphic elements to provide a view of the information space, the people talking about interfaces underscored the need to [a] keep the interface simple and [b] make the information
accessible. One attendee asked at the noon break, “Does anyone know if visualization can be converted to a return on investment?” No one had a case at hand although there was some anecdotal evidence about the payoffs from visualization.
Wrap Up
The second day’s speakers are now on the stage. Stay tuned for an update.
Stephen Arnold, April 29, 2008
Nstein: Joining Other Search Vendors in the Infomercial Parade
April 21, 2008
Nstein is a company that “delivers a complete lifecycle of solutions tailored for content-driven organizations to define and build a unique online brand experience that leverages assets, increases online revenues and meets customer expectations.” Now it is in the for-fee conference business.
Nstein has joined the parade of vendors running infomercial conferences. The idea is that a vendor hosts a conference, arranges for appropriate speakers, and runs a two- or three-day promotion. This type of infomercial makes sense for vendors for two very good reasons. The money once allocated to independent conference organizers for a booth and maybe a slot on a crowded program gets focused on one idea–the informercial owners’ product.
The second reason is perhaps even more pragmatic–control. An independent conference organizer can put on a panel a critic of a technology. There may be a rare annoyed customer. Even worse, a loud mouth in the audience can ask a difficult question and then make a vendor look like a contestant on “Are You Smarter than a Third Grader” who doesn’t know the answer.
In the good old days, vendors of search systems had user groups. A vendor would invite users to a location. The vendor would talk, and the users would trade ideas, some code snippets, and voice their concerns to management. Well, let me tell you that these became less folksy when the founder-owners of the companies were replaced by smart lawyers and with-it MBAs. The user groups are nowhere to be found in enterprise search and related disciplines. You can still locate a user group in the library world, and one company–Cuadra Associates where owner-founder-wizard Carlos Cuadra–is still running the company.
We are now in the midst of a boomlet of controlled-message conferences. There are many examples; for instance:
The Oracle conferences do double duty. These explain the Oracle way and provide a showcase for specific Oracle products. The Oracle SES10g–Oracle’s search and content processing system loaded with security options–has not had the PR muscle this year. The Oracle shows are combinations of technical evangelism for products like SES10g which has a low profile in some sectors, unabashed sales efforts, and Oracle fun.
Microsoft’s shows are good, but the attendees are sloshing with the particular Kool-Aid distributed by each Microsoft event. At the last Microsoft event I attended, I had to buy an extra duffle to cart home the free goodies, the hard copy documents, baseball caps, and T shirts (pretty good quality at that).
For search and retrieval, Fast Search & Transfer has its FastForward Conference, a Web log, and a stream of publicity that imprints the name of the company and hustles up attendees. This year’s bash attracted more than 1,500 attendees, a number of semi-objective speakers, and a handful of investor types who sniffed for a deal.
Endeca has announced that it will host its search conference this year “to encourage openness, collaboration, innovation among Endeca Developers, Partners, and Owners”. You can read about the 2007 conference here. I wasn’t able to come up with a link to the 2008 program, but I know it’s on the Endeca Web site. Glitch in Google, I suppose.
Not surprisingly, Nstein–a company that has repositioned itself from metatagging system to a broader media / marketing / content management / search solution–in in the game. The conference is “Innovation Leaders Summit 2008”. I am certain you will want to attend and learn about innovation from May 14 to 16, 2008. You can read more here and sign up. The cost is $1,195. (Turn down your speakers, this landing page plays sound. I assume that’s an innovation. There’s also a video on the page, another innovation.)
The agenda includes a track to help you chart a Google strategy. Judging from the program, it appears that there is a wide sweep to the program. Topics span search engine optimization (SEO), federated search, and workflow solutions are on tap. There’s a strong Canadian flavor to the preliminary list of speakers. And, there are Nstein executives on the program as well. When I visited the site (briefly due to the music playing), I saw mostly Nstein executives. The implication is that Nstein has mastered these diverse topics. Most search and content processing senior managers are competent in the any and all topics related to search and content processing, so relying on the firm’s executives makes sense in the sponsored-conference setting.
One plus is that conference will be held in “old” Montréal, a venue which has some wonderful restaurants and a number of interesting shops.
There is a downside to these infomercial conferences, and it’s one that is now having impacts that are not discussed in the professional journals or on specialist Web logs.
First, the messages at these conferences are shaped and channeled. The rough edges of an independent conference include talks that may be critical of a technology or a particular trend. A vendor-owned and vendor-operated conferences reduces the likelihood that the potentially disruptive questioning of a vendor once characteristic of traditional user groups is reduced. Unhappy customers and competitors don’t get to the podium.
Another consequence of vendor-owned conferences is that these are slowly sucking attendees from broader search-related conferences. I don’t want to identify any of these events, but attendance at some search-centric events is beginning to erode. I’m not talking about the SEO conferences. These are thriving because a Web site that’s not “in Google” doesn’t exist for all practical purposes.
The conferences are the more generalized looks at search and content processing. The vendor-sponsored shows are more uptown, and, therefore, pull attendees from the more traditional venues. If traditional conference organizers can’t revivify their offerings, we may lose some important oppotunities to hear objective albeit uneven presentations about search and content processing. Imagine watching TV and seeing only infomercials. As terrible as TV is, a diet of infomercials would present an odd view of reality. No presidential election but quite a few epoxy putty and thigh slimming messages.
The killer, of course, is money. When vendors run their own shindig, the conference companies take a financial hit. Fewer attendees and fewer exhibitors could mean the end of some useful, specialist programs.
I’m still a fan of the old-fashioned, let-the-customer-speak user groups. That shows how out of touch I am. I also like the objective shows. Speakers at these shows aren’t operating within guidelines the vendor lays down.
Stephen Arnold, April 22, 2008
EVVIE at the Boston Search Engine Meeting
March 20, 2008
Infonoritcs, Ltd. (Tetbury, Glou.) announced that the EVVIE award for the best paper will be awarded on Tuesday, April 29, 2008. Everett Brenner is generally regarded as one of the “fathers” of commercial online databases. He worked for the American Petroleum Institute and served as a mentor to many of the innovators who built commercial online.
The Boston Search Engine meeting attracts search professionals, search vendors, and experts interested in content processing, text analysis, and search and retrieval. Held each year in Boston, Ev, as he was known to his friends, demanded excellence in presentations about information processing.
Sponsored by Stephen E. Arnold (ArnoldIT.com), this award goes to the speaker who best exemplifies Ev’s standards of excellence. The selection committee consists of the program committee, assisted by Harry Collier (conference operator) and Stephen E. Arnold.
Mr. Arnold said, “I saw Ev shortly before he died. One of the things we talked about was selecting good speakers for the Infonortics conference. He asked me, “Is it possible to give special recognition to those who do outstanding work?’ I spoke with Ev’s wife and she agreed that an annual award was appropriate. Harry Collier made the EVVIE a part of the annual Search Engine Meeting. This award is one way for us to respect his contributions and support his life long commitment to excellence.”
The awardee receives a cash prize and an engraved plaque. Information about the conference is avaiable on the Infonortics, Ltd. Web site at www.infonortics.com and here. More information about the award is here.
Don Anderson, Intellas.com, March 20, 2008
ISYS Search Software: A Case Study about Patent Analysis
March 18, 2008
One of the questions I’m asked is, “What tools do you use to analyze Google’s patent applications, patents, and engineering documents?” The answer is that I have a work horse tool and a number of proprietary systems and methods. On March 7, 2008, the AIIM conference organizers gave me an opportunity to explain to about 40 attendees my techniques.
Before beginning my talk, I polled the audience for their interest in text analysis. Most of those in the audience were engaged in or responsible for eDiscovery. This buzz word means “taking a collection of documents and using software to determine [a] what the contents of the document collection are and [b] identifying important people, places, things, and events in documents,” eDiscovery needs more than key word, Boolean, and free text search. The person engaged in eDiscovery does not know what’s in the collection, so crafting a useful key word query is difficult. In the days before rich text processing tools, eDiscovery meant sitting down with a three-ring binder of hard copies of emails, depositions, and other printed material. The lucky researcher began reading, flagging important segments with paper clips or color bits of paper. The work was time consuming, tedious, and iterative. Humans — specifically, this human — have to cycle through printed materials in an effort to “connect the dots” and identify the substantive information.
You can see a version of the PowerPoint deck used on March 6, 2008, here. The key points in the presentation were:
- Convert the source documents into a machine-manipulable form. This is a content transformation procedure. We use some commercial products but use custom scripts to handle most of our transformation work. The reason is that patent applications and patents are complicated and very inconsistent. Commercial products such as those available from open source or third – party vendors are not easily customized.
- Collections are processed using ISYS Search Software. This system — which we have been using for more than five years — generates an index of the documents in the collection, identifies entities (names of people, for example), and provides a number of useful access points by category. We typically copy claims or sections of the abstract and run additional queries in order to pinpoint similar inventions. In the case of Google’s disclosures, this iterative process is particularly important. Google routinely incorporates other patent applications in patent applications. Chasing down these references is difficult without ISYS’s functionality. Keep in mind that other vendors’ systems may work as well, but I have standardized in order to minimize the surprises that certain text processing systems spring on me. ISYS has proven to be reliable, fast, and without unexpected “gotchas”. You can learn more about this system here.
- Specific documents of interest are then reviewed by a human who creates an electronic “note card” attached to the digital representation of the source document and to its Portable Document Format instance if available. Having one-click access to patent applications and patents in PDF form is essential. The drawings, diagrams, figures, and equations in the text of a document must be consulted during the human analysis process.
The PowerPoint deck is here. What software do you use to analyze patent applications, patents, and engineering documents? Let me know.
Stephen Arnold, March 18, 2008
Google and the Enterprise
March 16, 2008
On March 4, 2008, I delivered a short talk followed by open discussion at the AIIM Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. The title of my talk was “Google: Disrupting the Traditional World of Enterprise Applications”.
The core idea of my talk is that Google is poised to offer more enterprise applications and services. Most of the attention is directed at what some journalists characterize as “Microsoft Office killers”. That emphasis is incorrect. The more interesting enterprise functions include map-related capabilities and data integration and management functions.
Unfortunately I do not reproduce the online sessions I access when talking in front of an audience. I do not reproduce all of the visuals I use in my PowerPoint deck. Some of these figures come from my studies to which the copyright has been assigned to litigious publishers, an evil breed indeed. If you want to talk to me about an in-person briefing, you can send me email here: ait at arnoldit.com. I’m cutting back on my travel, but I will give your request serious attention. You can also buy copies of The Google Legacy and Google Version 2.0 from Infonortics, Ltd., in Tetbury, Glou. and in April 2008 my new study, Beyond Search: What to Do When Your Search System Won’t Work from Frank Gilbane. Most of the information in this AIIM briefing came from these studies.
Transportation
The first example uses Google’s familiar Maps and Earth service. You can look at digital versions of maps, plot routes, and see the names of local businesses, among other well-worn functions. With a click, you can replace the map with a satellite image. New features make it possible for you to upload data, display thos data on a map, and perform a wide variety of manipulations. The audience continues to enjoy looking at Google’s examples as well as those from clever Google Map hackers. Here’s a St. Patrick’s day Google Map that gives you some idea of the ways in which multimedia data can be embedded in a Google Map.
So what’s this have to do with an enterprise, government agency, or association. Quite a bit. The example I used in my talk is that Google is in the transportation routing, management, and logistics business. Few know about its capabilities in this field. When I asked a Googler about it, the response I received was, “I don’t know anything about that function.” While not surprising to me, the response illustrates how Google’s employees often lack a “big picture” view of what the company’s technical engineers have created and other Googlers have sold.
My example is Google’s transportation routing system in use in San Francisco, California. A Google employee can use a mobile phone to SMS for a shuttle pick up. Google’s automated system receives the request, figures out when a shuttle can be dispatched to the Googler’s location, and SMS es back to the Googler when the shuttle will arrive. The Google system updates the routing information to the human driver of the shuttle who proceeds to the location.
In this way, Google can provide “green” transportation services without the cost and hassle of traditional bus routes. You can read more about this invention in Google patent document US20060149461.
What’s this have to do with the enterprise? The technology disclosed in the patent document suggests to me that Google can use the same sytstem and method to:
- Provide shuttle routing services to municipalities or to private operators of services such as airport shuttles
- Offer cloud-based routing services to trucking and delivery companies
- Apply the functions to broader logistics problems so that data and routing can be displayed in real time.
One of the fastest growing businesses at Google, according to my sources, is what is known as geo spatial services and applications. But Google’s capabilities give it the flexibility to move quickly and without warning into adjacent business sectors such as logistics.
The Google Search Appliance
This section of my talk described the GSA or Google Search Appliance. The enterprise group at Google has its own engineers and sales team. With each version of the GSA, the system improves. With more than 10,000 customers worldwide, Google’s GSA is arguably one of the most widely-used behind-the-firewall search systems. It’s no longer necessary to license a GSA to provide Web site search. Google’s free custom search engine can handle that job.
But the GSA is less interesting to me than the OneBoxAPI. In my talk, I showed several examples of how Google’s OneBox API makes it possible to use the GSA to federate information. (Federation means that a search system takes information from multiple sources and displays one relevance ranked list of results.) But I find laundry lists uninteresting.
The GSA goes “beyond search” as you can see in this Google screen shot I sucked down from the Web before the link went dead.
The tiny red and green bars in the screen shot graphic show the GSA pulling data about the query from a Microsoft Exchange Server. The traditional list of results is enriched with a dynamic view of the subject of the query’s schedule. In short, the GSA lets you pull a colleague’s phone number, schedule, and other related information by typing a first and last name into the GSA search box.
I find this suggestive, but I challenge the audience to tell me if a system can apply a certainty score to each result or provide a one-click way to determine where these data originated. The audience at my talk rarely speaks up, and on this occasion, a few people shook their heads. The others in the audience didn’t know how to query on certainty or lineage and let my question hang unanswered.
Google is working on a system that adds these types of queries to its search system. Information about this function is scarce, and I am now looking through Google’s public information to find more clues. So far, I have a buzz word uncertainty score and a name which may or may not be correct, Dr. Levy. Stay tuned on this subject. You will find a 10-page discussion of this fascinating extension to Google’s search technology in Beyond Search.
What’s this function bring to the enterprise? That’s a difficult question to answer. I think that it would be very useful to have a score such as 79 percent or 21 percent attached to each search result to indicate how likely the information were to be correct. Right now, few people looking for information give much thought to the reliability of data or to their provenance. This technology, if my research is accurate, would allow Google to expand its services to the enterprise for competitive intelligence. Law enforcement, of couirse, would be quite interested in knowing the likelihood of an item’s being accurate.
Wrap Up
Despite the small turnout for the talk, Information Week ran a short news item about one of the examples I used to illustrate my theme. You can read the story here. More information about a less visible Google enterprise application appears in the Entchev TIS Architects Web log. The New Jersey Transit Authority has partnered with Google to allow NJTA customers to plan their trips using Google. You can read this story here.
I’ve posted a PDF version of the PowerPoint deck I used to illustrate my talk. You will find that information on the ArnoldIT Web site on Monday, March 17, 2008. I have to jump through some hoops to create a usable PDF, so don’t look for this deck until Monday, probably about 4 pm US Eastern time.
Stephen Arnold, March 16, 2008
CMS: Houston, We Have a Problem!
March 7, 2008
The 2008 AIIM show is history.
I spent several days in Boston (March 3, 4, 5, 2008), wondering why the city built a massive concrete shoe box, probably designed by a Harvard or MIT graduate inspired by Franz Kafka and post-Stalinist architecture. It’s obvious no one had the moxie to tell our budding Leonid Savelyev that people expect mass transit, doors to the hotel across the street, and an easy-to-navigate interior. Spend a few hours wandering around this monstrosity, and you may resonate with my perceptions of this facility.
There’s another disaster brewing under the AIIM umbrella. That’s what the in-crowd calls content management. Synonyms in play at this show included CMS, ECMS (enterprise or extreme content management systems), and eDocuments, among others.
These synonyms are a radio beacon that says to me, loud and clear: “We have a way to help you deal with electronic information.” These assurances wrapped in buzzwords make it clear that organizations are: [a] unable to deal with basic storage and findability tasks; [b] confused about how business processes can and should intersect; [c] staggered like a punch drunk fighter with the brutally punishing costs of these eDoc solutions; and [e] scared because a mistake can send them to court or, even worse, jail. No one I met fancied doing a perp walk in an orange suit due to a failure to comply with regulatory mandates, legal discovery, and basic, common sense record keeping.
Folks were pretty thrilled to get a Google mouse pad from the Googlers or a rubber ball with flashing lights in it from Open Text. But amidst the bonhomie, there was a soupçon of desperation.
To me CMS and its step children attempt to make a run-of-the-mill operation into a high-end publishing company. The problem with attempting to embed an intellectual process dependent on information into software is that most people aren’t very good informationists. Using a BlackBerry or an automatic teller machine is not the same as creating useful, accurate, on-point information. CMS has now morphed from managing a static Web site’s content into a giant, Rube Goldberg machine that ingests everything and outputs anything, at least according to the marketers I met.
Electronic information is now a major problem for most employees, senior managers, and vendors. Building a solution that is affordable and satisfies the needs of the Securities & Exchange Commission from Tinker Toys is a tough job. I saw lots of Tinker Toy solutions on offer. I’m genuinely concerned about the problems these systems are exacerbating. “Trouble,” as one cowboy said to his side kick, “is coming down the line.”
This essay highlights the three of my take-aways from this conference and exhibition. According to the chatter, there were more than 2,000 paying attendees who sat through lectures on subjects ranging from “Architecture Considerations in Electronic Records Management Software Selection: to “Pragmatic to Value Add: Will Anyone Really Pay for It?”. There were product reviews disguised as substantive lectures. I suffered some thin gruel that passing as a solid intellectual feast. I heard that another 20,000 people fascinated with copiers, high-speed imaging, and digital information wandered through the charming aircraft hanger of an exhibit hall.
Most of the presenters “follow the game plan”. The talks are in the average to below average grade range. A few are interesting, but finding one is a hit-and-miss affair. This conference housed a Drupal conference, something called On Demand, and the AIIM conference. For my purposes, there’s one conference, and the unifying theme was lots of people talking about electronic information.
What I Learned
Let me compress 18 hours of AIIM experiences into these points:
- Digital content is a major problem for most organizations. CMS is the band aid, but none of the vendors has a cure for information obesity. None of the customers with whom I spoke using vendors’ solutions are in shape for a digital triathlon. Systems are expensive and flaky. Budgets are tight, and the problems of storing, finding, and repurposing information are getting worse fast.
- Vendors with hardware solutions that scan paper, print paper, and manipulate digital counterparts of paper are spouting digital babble and double talk. Vendors of quasi – copy machines talk about hardware as if it were bits in a cloud. AIIM has its roots in scanning, micrographics, microfilm, and printing. Hardware — even when it is the size of an SUV — is positioned as software, a system, and a platform. Obviously hardware lacks sizzle. Vendors with software solutions talk about the pot of gold at the end of the dieters’ rainbow. It just ain’t true, folks. It’s a Nike running shoe commercial applied to information. No go. Sorry.
- Marketing messages are not just muddled; the messages are almost incomprehensible. Listening to earnest 30 – year olds tell me about “enterprise repositories with integrated content transformation and repurposing functionality” and “e – presentment” left me 100 percent convinced that the information crisis has arrived, and the vendors will say anything to get a deal and the buyers will buy whatever assuages their fears. Rationality was not a surplus in these sales pitches.
My stomach rebels at baloney.
The “Real” Problem
Organizations right now are fighting a three – front war against digital information. I know that the AIIM attendees are having a tough time expressing their challenges clearly. The people with whom I spoke can only describe the problem from an individual point of view. Vendors want to be all things to all people. The dialogs among the customers and the vendors are fascinating and disturbing to me. I think the market is in a state of turmoil.
Digital information is a different type of challenge for an organization. On one hand, it eliminates the hassles of recycling some information. Cut and paste is a wonderful function. But if your work processes are screwed up, digital information only creates more problems. If your employees aren’t good informationists, you will produce more dross than ever. You will, of course, do it more quickly which adds to the problem. Furthermore, finding something remains tough. Automated systems are expensive, complex, and fully capable of going off the rails with no warning.
What was crystal clear to me is that most business processes have not been “informationized”, to use a weird verb form I heard at the show. Work flows are based on human actions. Humans are just not very good at “being digital”.
Wrap Up
An inability to handle digital information is a problem of great import. Regulators expect companies to manage digital information. Organizations aren’t set up to deal effectively with the data volume and its challenges — format, versions, volatility, non-textual components, etc. The problem is not getting better. The problem is getting bigger.
One well-fed, sleek senior manager smirked with pride about the huge prices paid by certain firms to acquire enterprise content management companies (ECM or enterprise CMS in the jargon of AIIM). He pointed to two firms — EMC and Hewlett Packard — as particularly adept practitioners of snapping up “hot” companies in order to get “high margin upsides”. “There’s a big market for this high-end solution,” he asserted.
I think this weird MBA speak means that EMC and HP want to buy into a sector with fat margins and semi-desperate customers. This can work, but I am not sure that these two firms’ “solutions” are going to solve the information challenges most organizations now face. EMC wants to move hardware. HP wants to sell printers and ink.
I’m probably wrong. I usually stray into the swamp anyway.
I think information mis-management will bring the direct downfall of some organizations in the next few months. Tactical fixes will not be enough. When an information-centric collapse occurs, perhaps buzzwords will give way to new thinking about digital information in organizations. More meat, fewer empty calories, please!
Stephen Arnold, March 7, 2008
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