Customer Experience to Take Center Stage in 2012
December 2, 2011
We are post-Thanksgiving—that time of year when the “year in review” articles start emerging and predictions are made for coming trends to meet us in the new year. The world of content management systems is no exception. Marisa Peacock gives us some of her predictions in, “If 2012 Is the Year of Customer Experience, What Will it Bring?”
According to Peacock, customer experience will take center stage in areas such as mobile, social, personalization, and localization to name a few. What does all this mean to us? A need for better content management.
Peacock’s advice:
“Of course, we must wait for 2012 to really understand how and if brands will leverage the customer experience. With only a month left before the new year, companies of all sizes are strongly encouraged to revisit their mobile strategies, customer relationship management tools and social media policies.”
How do you prepare in a smart way, despite what changes the new year may bring? Invest in a smart content management solution, one that can handle information needs on multiple levels. We like Fabasoft Mindbreeze and its suite of offerings.
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise understands you, or to be more precise, understands what the most important information is for you at any precise moment in time. It is the center of excellence for your knowledge and simultaneously your personal assistant for all questions. The information pairing technology brings enterprise and Cloud data together.”
Mindbreeze can handle mobile, email, enterprise, website search, etc. Their Connectors feature works with SharePoint 2010, if that system is already in place at your organization. Regardless of the size or scope of your organization, information needs continue to grow exponentially. Heed the warnings and manage your information in a way that improves the customer experience. Find a smart solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze and you will be able to adapt to changing needs.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 02, 2011
Sponsored by: Pandia.com
Content Management Best Practices
November 25, 2011
With the raging demand for content management systems, not all organizations know how to correctly implement such systems, such as the ubiquitous SharePoint. Specifically with SharePoint, an organization can’t just open the box and expect their content to be organized and retrievable. Patrick Sledz lays out some best practices when working with content in SharePoint in his blog entry, “5 Best Practices for Working with Documents and SharePoint.” In addition to advice about file naming, Sledz also addresses using SharePoint as a platform and not just a filing system.
“Use SharePoint as a Document Management Platform. And I mean Platform, not just a secondary file storage location. The file stored here is the ‘one version of the truth.’ This is your starting and ending point. DO NOT send this document to people, but send links to the document. This way you’ll keep just 1 version of the truth.”
Adding to the theme of organization and storage, Sledz recommends adding metadata. While the advice is good for SharePoint users, we have found third party solutions that offer intuitive applications incorporating these principles. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers a suite of solutions that when combined provide for every aspect of an organization’s information storage and retrieval needs. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise offers its own enterprise solution, or Fabasoft Mindbreeze Connector syncs up with an organization’s current SharePoint applications, increasing usability and retrieval.
“The Microsoft SharePoint Connector connects the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise and enables the search for documents stored in that application.”
Metadata is innate and intuitive with a solution like Mindbreeze. So while the above best practices are a good reminder for any organization using enterprise solutions, a smart enterprise solution will provide more answers and leave your organization with less questions. Check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze to see if their products can save you time and trouble.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 25, 2011
Sponsored by: Pandia.com
ISYS Has 16,000 Customers. Did I Goof?
November 11, 2011
I covered six vendors of enterprise search systems in my June 2011 The New Landscape of Enterprise Search. An azure chip consulting firm borrowed a key word from my monograph’s title and put out a report covering twice as many vendors.
Today I read “16,000 Organizations Worldwide Now Boost Their Productivity with the ISYS 1-Click FileFinder.” In a write up about AtomicPR’s spam attack on me and the MarkLogic “reinvention of itself as more than a file markup and repository outfit,” I mentioned ISYS Search Software was licensing its connectors, essentially software widgets that allow one system to ingest the files from an incompatible system. So ISYS, ISYS, ISYS.
Years ago I met the founder of ISYS Search Software in Crow’s Nest in a suburb Sydney, Australia. I recall a very interesting lunch in a restaurant that was almost next to the ISYS headquarters. Very interesting those Australian engineers. At the time, I was doing something for some outfit sponsoring the international chief of police conference or some similar intelligence-type event. I was one of the speakers and a guest of the Australian government. In my spare time, I was either watching folks shoot red kangaroos or visiting search and information retrieval experts. After the visit, I did some work for Ian Davies, the founder. His role has changed, and I have lost track of him, his senior sales professional, and the senior engineer whom I met that day. Distance and time I suppose.
I have drifted away from ISYS because I learned that the company–despite a new president, new lines of business like licensing connectors, and introducing file finding utilities—was not hitting my radar with the sort of information I am now tracking. No problem, of course. Quite a few search vendors have changed their spots or at least their marketing pitch faster than a rap star who signs a movie deal. Examples range from Coveo becoming a customer support solution provider to Vivisimo’s puzzling “information optimization.” Other vendors have gone quiet like Dieselpoint, an XML centric search system vendor. Others have found themselves on the receiving end of a dump truck filled with cash. Think InQuira, Autonomy, Endeca, and RightNow to name four vendors who are now happily within giant corporate shells thinking about which island to buy.
My understanding is that ISYS generates about one third of its revenue from the US and the balance from elsewhere. Although the UK is a good market for ISYS, the company’s stronghold is Australia. This raises what I call “the Canadian question.” Ah, you ask, “What’s Canada got to do with Australia and ISYS?”
Here’s my point. When determining how much revenue one of my ventures can generate in Canada, I take the US revenue and then figure that Canada will product 10 percent of that amount. The reason has to do with population, appetite for the sort of products my team produces, and experience. The 10 percent can be five percent, or it could be 15 percent. However, 10 percent is a good rule of thumb.
Therefore, if a company in Australia generates $10 million a year in that country of 23 million people, then it follows that the US with its population of 308 million should produce revenue of about 12 to 13 times the Australian revenue. If we assume that ISYS is generating $10 million from the land down under, I would expect $120 million from the land up above.
I may be off base, but in our research for The New Landscape of Enterprise Search, I did not find data to support that ISYS was generating revenue in this range. Therefore, I decided to exclude the company from my monograph.
The azure chip consulting firm replete with home economics majors, a handful of former journalists, and a couple of failed webmasters sees the world differently. I think the reason is that the azure chip outfit uses its reports as sales collateral. I don’t have any first hand experience with the “real” consultants in enterprise search, but after reading some of these reports, I formed my own opinion. Yours may differ.
To answer the question, “Did I goof by not including ISYS along side Autonomy, Endeca, Exalead, Google, Microsoft, and Vivisimo?,” The answer is, “I don’t think so.”
Hoping a vendor is competing with the likes of Autonomy, Endeca, Exalead, etc. is one thing. Actually beating these firms in major accounts is a different one. Just my opinion, and I look forward to the push back from the “experts” who know more than I, aggrieved company executives who want me to revisit my conclusions about which companies are altering the landscape of search, and the “real” consultants who will swarm over my view point.
Have at it kids. Sales revenues matter. When someone plops down $1.2 billion as Microsoft did for the Fast Search & Technology system or the interesting $10 billion for Autonomy, I will make another pass over the “big six.” Until then, I need to hear first hand about how non US firms cope with my Canadian rule of thumb. I quite like the ISYS technology. But for Landscape, revenues play more of a role than technology.
Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Indexing FileNet from SharePoint
September 1, 2011
EntropySoft Products Enhance Blumark Operations
August 20, 2011
PR.com nnounces, “Blumark Chooses EntropySoft Products for Improved ECM Migrations and Better Content Integration.” The Australian company is impressed with EntropySoft’s content integration prowess. The press release explains,
The technology partnership will allow Blumark to provide customers with better migration and content management services, with the help of EntropySoft’s content integration products. Blumark will be EntropySoft’s primary partner for the Australasian region, thanks to Blumark’s experience and proven track record in the ECM integration and migration markets. Blumark customers will benefit from the extensive functionality and fast deployment time offered by EntropySoft products.
Blumark specializes in managing business processes and data efficiently. They boast of dedication to their clients, delivering trusted solutions, and focusing on the business outcome over the technology.
EntropySoft aims high: it intends to lead the world in interoperability and connectivity. The company plans to do so by providing the best software available, and will bring their Content Hub integration suite to Blumark’s South Pacific customers. ISYS Search is also in the connector business. Seems like the connector sector is coming to life.
Cynthia Murrell August 20, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
XT Modules Compliment Attivio AIE Platform
August 10, 2011
ITBriefing.net tells us, “Attivio Announces XT Modules to Complete the Big Data Picture.” We think Attivio is an interesting company, and these offerings underscore their unique approach.
The company believes businesses must go beyond data aggregation to sophisticated contextual analysis. The new modules augment Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine (AIE) platform. The article quotes Donald Fienberg, vice president and analyst at a consulting firm opined:
IT leaders must not focus on the obvious issue of volume alone, but equally consider the other elements of velocity, variety and complexity, which Gartner refers to as the broader category of Extreme Information, as well as the key area of access enablement. If they do focus too narrowly, their enterprises will have to make massive reinvestments within a couple of years to address the other dimensions of big data.
The XT Modules aim to help clients to avoid that reinvestment problem by doing it right the first time. The modules include: the AIE Recommendation Engine, which identifies relationships that can be leveraged to increase online buying; the AIE Classification Engine, which automatically categorizes documents; the Cloudera Connectors Package; Individual Hive, HDFS and Hbase Connectors; and the XT Services & Assessment Pack.
Provided they function as promised, these tools should provide a leg up to Attivio’s clients.
Cynthia Murrell August 10, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Knowledge XChanger Version 7.0 from Comintelli
May 18, 2011
ThomasNet News showcases “Comintelli Launches New Knowledge XChanger7.0, Promising Reduced Information Overload.” This press release from Comintelli heralds the latest version of their lauded information portal. The Swedish company prides itself on its responsiveness to client feedback:
Several Comintelli customers and partners have helped benchmark the performance and scalability of the new architecture and provided their knowledge, search, and user interface (UI) resources during the development process. “’One of Comintelli’s long-standing operating principles is to build our solutions based on customer feedback and enhancing usability,’ said Jesper Martell, CEO.
Knowledge XChanger integrates with systems such as SharePoint and automatically aggregates, structures, analyzes, and delivers data. Emphasizing the product’s ability to address the needs of sizable enterprises, the write-up describes five areas of emphasis: large-scale content distribution in a variety of formats; fast and flexible data import handlers; improvement in search performance and speed; customizable interfaces; and easier content creation and sharing.
Cynthia Murrell, May 18, 2011
Freebie
Nuxeo and the Google Search Appliance
April 28, 2011
I saw a brief news item about the integration of the open source content management system with the Google Search Appliance. Nuxeo already hooks into Lotus Notes and a number of other enterprise applications. The cheery “Great News…Nuxeo Integration with Google Search Appliance” points out:
Nuxeo’s recently announced Google Search Appliance (GSA) connector is an important component for any enterprise indexing and search strategy. Nuxeo content is actively indexed and can be searched using the familiar Google search page. Of course, to access Nuxeo content you still to login and you must have appropriate rights. And because the Nuxeo connector is open source, it can always be customized to meet your specific requirements!
My reaction to this announcement was a question about the cost of scaling a GSA search solution. I covered some of Google’s publicly posted pricing data for its GB 7007 and GB 9009 devices. The article appeared in ETM, a publication of ISIGlobal.com. (This was a for fee column, so you will have to chase down the hard copy of the publication or contact ISIGlobal.com.) I had a couple of comments about the cost of the GSA, particularly when an organization has to upgrade to handle tens of millions of documents.
My reaction is that organizations considering the GSA will want to make certain about the document count and then get written price quotations for the appropriate GSA AND the cost of scaling that Google Search Appliance as the volume of content increases.
The savings from an open source CMS could be consumed by a GSA upgrade unless the licensee does his or her homework.
Stephen E Arnold, April 28, 2011
Freebie unlike the GSA
Attivio: A Wave Maker
April 13, 2011
“Attivio Software Making Waves” reported that Attivio, Inc. and Traction Software have teamed up with the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative and Cornell University to collaborate on a “community portal”. The portal will bring together members of the scientific community, including universities and agricultural organizations from around 45 countries. They will work together to study wheat rust (a fungal disease that jeopardizes wheat, barley, and rye crops) and to prevent it’s spread. The write up said:
Knowledge is typically spread through presentations and the publication of research within leading journals – a process that can slow the exchange of knowledge by months and years…Given the severity of the threat to the world’s food supply, the BGRI could not afford to operate on that kind of timeline. We needed a collaborative platform that could be easily organized and updated and be accessible from anywhere in the world.
The Attivio software has the ability to compile the information of scientists all over the globe. Scientists often use a wide range of formats and file types. The Attivio system processes a range of content types, include information in SharePoint or locked up in the unwieldy Adobe Portable Document Format. Attivio does search as well as business intelligence functions. The objective is to save scientists time and money in their efforts to stop the Borlaug Global Rust blight. Without the Attivio system , wheat rust might extend its reach.
Worthwhile effort at a time when most search vendors want to do customer support (also a blight of sorts) and shift the responsibility of finding information to algorithms (an intellectual blight of sorts).
Leslie Radcliff, April 13, 2011
Freebie
Search Technologies: Makes the Google Search Appliance Sing
April 12, 2011
According our information here at Beyond Search, There are more than 35,000 Google Search Appliances in organizations worldwide. Although data are sketchy, some US government agencies have more than 50 GSAs providing search and retrieval functions. To put the number 35,000 in context, Autonomy has more than 30,000 licensees of its search system worldwide. In short, since 2002, the Google Search Appliance has moved from novelty to one of the most widely used enterprise search and retrieval systems in the world. Only public Web search systems reach more users than Google’s GSA.
In order to learn the ins and outs of the Google Search Appliance one had to put in long hours scrutinizing Google’s copious online documentation and then work through a GSA set up. Google makes a low cost appliance available, but many managers and system administrators need a fast start and insider tips for getting the most out of GSA.
Until now, combining the basics with the “need to know” information to make the Google Search Appliance sing was knowledge that simply was not available in an easy-to-digest form. Search Technologies, one of the world’s leading search consultancies and integration firms, has responded to this market need. We learned that Search Technologies will participate in a Federal Search Seminar on May 5, 2011. The location is the Google office at 1101 New York Avenue. You can get additional information at this link. You can register via the Search Technologies Web site at this link.
The program will include how to plan a sophisticated search application. The Search Technologies and Google team will discuss the most common pitfalls and how planning can mitigate these challenges. The return on investment will be discussed with particular reference to the payoffs from Google’s simplified approach to deployment and the next-generation methods for integrating disparate content into the GSA’s retrieval system. In addition, the session will dig into how to connect to multiple repositories within an organization. Running separate queries across many different enterprise and desktop systems is no longer feasible in today’s fast growth data environment. The session will also include a review of the most recent technological advances in search, including the innovations in the latest version of the GSA.
According to Search Technologies’ founder, Kamran Khan:
This session is about how to fit search into real life business issues. Technology is important, but a focus on the business problem is paramount. The presentations provide the attendee with expertise gained through implementation of the GSA in a variety of different work situations. A focus on specific business objectives makes the GSA sing.
Appliances, like toasters, are made to plug in. but the GSA benefits from being implemented with a business focus. The Search Technologies’ team has handled more than 60 GSA implementations. You can benefit from this direct knowledge in the Google Washington, DC office. Space is limited.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2011
Search Technologies
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