EasyAsk: Exclusive Interview with Craig Bassin
November 22, 2010
EasyAsk was one of the first search vendors who demonstrated access to structured and unstructured data from a single interface. The firm is now under new ownership, and I wanted to get an update about the company and its technology.
Last week, I was able to talk with Craig Bassin, a former partner in an investment firm. Mr. Bassin is now pushing EasyAsk forward and made his excitement about the company, its technology, and future palpable. The full text of my interview with Mr. Bassin is available in the Search Wizards Speak series at this link.
I want to highlight two points from the one hour interview because each provides useful insight into a company that can compete with such firms as Endeca as well as vendors of technology to organizations struggling with information retrieval.
First, Mr. Bassin calls attention to the EasyAsk natural language processing method. He said:
While EasyAsk also supports the navigational style of search we go much further in helping customers find what they want quickly. EasyAsk’s natural language approach allows buyers to enter an entire descriptive phrase of exactly what they want. The natural language and semantic processing engine understands the context of the search and returns accurate results on the first page, greatly increasing conversion rates. With EasyAsk, customers can chose how they want to find products, and they will find them faster… EasyAsk enables e-commerce websites to always return search results, reducing the number of lost visitors.
My take is that NLP technology is getting more attention now that the limitations of key word searching and laundry lists of results are more well known. (In fact, my column each month for KMWorld will address the use of NLP and semantic technology in the enterprise starting in January 2011.)
Second, I probed Mr. Bassin about EasyAsk’s enterprise solution. He told me:
As you well know, the typical enterprise search product is geared towards allowing users to search unstructured or semi-structured data using keywords to find documents they need. This is good when a user is looking for a specific document, like a contract or performance review. EasyAsk Business Edition addresses a completely different problem – giving casual users faster, easier access to corporate data. At our core, EasyAsk is all about Natural Language linguistic processing, that is, understanding the ‘intent’ of any given question, or query. We’ve extended our intuitive search capability into corporate data allowing users to search, analyze, report and share results. … We designed EasyAsk for casual business users who need immediate access to data so they can make informed decisions improving their ability to increase sales, service customers and execute operational processes. And, they can’t wait a few weeks for IT or a data analyst to get them a custom report.
To learn more about EasyAsk, navigate to www.easyask.com. You can read other interviews in the Search Wizards Speak series at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, November 22, 2010
Freebie but there is always hope…
Endeca, an Underdog?
November 7, 2010
In “The B2B Underdog” Pete Bell, a senior manager at Endeca, details how the owners and operators of Business to Business eCommerce programs get together to discuss the bones of the business and how they get no respect in comparison to those who run Business to Consumer (B2C) programs. Never mind the fact that some executives of the B2B channels are making billions of dollars. The keynote speaker, Brian Walker explained why B2B isn’t doing as well as the B2C channels. He notes they aren’t using all of the same resources. Never mind that these resources are available to them, they have chosen not to take advantage of them.
“We know that with more channels comes more complexity. But it’s early – no one knows yet what the B2B experience of the future will be. So, In the face of change, the solution is to take a first guess, test, then improve.”
In my opinion, wouldn’t the answer be to hire more people and use the available channels and build from there? In order to compete with the B2C world they’re going to have to make themselves more available through the changing mediums that consumers are using to do business.
Leslie Radcliff, November 7, 2010
Oracle ATG Deal Leaves Other eCommerce Vendors at the Alter
November 4, 2010
Who is getting the bride’s bouquet? Endeca, one of the pioneers in faceted search for eCommerce? EasyAsk, one of the hidden gems in eCommerce? Exorbyte, a company run with an intentionally low profile and a “can do” attitude?
Nope. No one caught the bouquet. Oracle’s vision was articulated in the deal write up “Oracle and ATG”:
Driven by the convergence of online and traditional commerce and the need to increase revenue and improve customer loyalty—organizations across many industries are seeking a unified cross-channel commerce and customer relationship management platform to deliver a cohesive customer experience across all commerce channels.
Assumptions, assertions, and wordsmithing entertain me. I think the key to the deal appears in the news release “Oracle Buys ATG”:
More than 1,000 global enterprises rely on ATG’s solutions to help increase the value of their online customer interactions,” said Bob Burke, President and CEO, ATG. “This combination will enhance the ability to bring all their commerce activities together – creating a more consistent and relevant experience for their customers across all interaction channels, including online, in stores, via mobile devices and with call centers.”
See the hook? More customers, more than 1,000. Pay $1 billion, get 1,000 customers. Oh, Oracle also gets Endeca, a partner of ATG.
With organic growth getting more and more difficult, litigation and acquisition become the two draft horses of revenue or at least that’s how I see the deal.
What about search? What these outfits have is good enough. Maybe? Maybe not?
Stephen E Arnold, November 4, 2010
Freebie
Vivisimo Generates Revenue from Recycler.com
November 2, 2010
Short honk: We learned that Vivisimo has been selected to provide search and content processing for Recycler.com. The service, owned by Target Media Partners, has created a single Recycler.com Web site for its three score print publications. Target Media wants to go after a market once dominated by newspapers and now mostly in the death grip of Craigslist. To differentiate itself from Craigslist, Target Media wants to follow Steve Jobs’s path and eliminate the nasty stuff from the firm’s new service. The Los Angeles Business Journal has a useful profile of Target Media in “Rival Reborn”.
The news item “Recycler.com Selects Vivisimo’s Velocity Platform” said [Data Monitor links can go dead so you may have to hunt around]:
Recycler.com chose Velocity for its handling of bins and facets, federated searches, and ability to customize ranking methodologies to ensure the relevant ads are displayed to users.
Our perception of Vivisimo was the company was providing federated search and integration services. The use of Velocity in an application that we associated with functions from Endeca, Exalead, Intelligenx, and other vendors surprised us. For more information about Vivisimo, navigate to www.vivisimo.com.
Stephen E Arnold, November 2, 2010
Freebie
Endeca Beats Other Search Vendors to Finish Line
October 19, 2010
“Why Finish Line ran with Unbound Commerce for Mobile” reported that Endeca beat other eCommerce search vendors for a juicy retail job. The story said:
By choosing Unbound Commerce, which offered pre-integrations with these applications, the retailer was able to get its mobile site, m.finishline.com, up and running in six weeks from the date it signed on with Unbound…
That’s the good news. The story added:
Although the mobile site hasn’t yet produced the high conversion rate that Finish Line had expected, it has been effective at driving significant volumes of visitors to its e-commerce site and stores…
For more information about Endeca, navigate to www.endeca.com.
Stephen E Arnold, October 19, 2010
Freebie
New Virtual Shopping Assistant Opens Doors
October 15, 2010
More about the search-without-search boomlet. With the large number of products available on the market, picking out a simple item can seem as complicated as buying a new car. When it comes to technology such as computers, the fact that they change so often can make it difficult to know exactly what to buy. The company SalesClark wants to help shoppers make those hard decisions with the release of their automated virtual shopping assistant. PR Web article “SalesClark Brings Artificial Intelligence to Online Shopping” describes the program which is designed to make shopping easier and more efficient. The CEO of SalesClark describes the program as “An intelligent shopping assistant saves time and money for busy customers.” A brief customer consultation allows the program to connect shoppers with the products that best meet their needs. Users can enjoy the convenience of finding the products they want quicker and easier. The SalesClark beta version is being released to the public and is geared towards helping shoppers find a new computer. Users can choose the exact features or options they want and get quick and accurate results. Whether you are a beginner making your first computer purchase or a skilled novice this virtual shopping assistant does all the work for you.
April Holmes, October 15, 2010
Freebie
PoolCorp and Exalead Complete a High Scoring Deployment
October 6, 2010
PoolCorp. has immersed itself in Exalead’s search enabled applications framework, CloudView. According to information from Exalead, in 2009, PoolCorp evaluated its existing e-commerce platform and decided that a complete ground-up rewrite was needed to improve the ability for their customers to find products easier and faster. PoolCorp has always provided value-added tools for its dealers to grow their businesses and saw this as an opportunity to combine the best features of all of those tools into a new solution that would address all of the current customer adoption obstacles. With 35 percent of all
customer feedback surrounding search and search related functions, it was clear that in order for the new e-commerce site to provide an industry-leading customer purchase experience, an enterprise search solution was required.
Before deciding upon CloudView, PoolCorp reviewed a number of enterprise search solutions including Microsoft FAST, Endeca, Autonomy and open source Solr. Exalead told Beyond Search, “PoolCorp chose Exalead because it was cost effective, scalable and much easier to install than competing products.”
Dustin Hughes, the senior software archtect of PoolCorp said:
Great software like Exalead is like a ball of clay. You can easily push and mold it into how you need to use it. We had an extremely tight timeline for installing this software – due in part to Exalead’s fantastic customer support we got our beta up and working within weeks and rolled out to 500+ customers within 2 months. The entire system became generally available to 30,000+ U.S. customers within four months of the start of development and initial customer feedback has been very positive.
Beyond Search learned that since the POOL360 beta test in July 2010, PoolCorp found:
- The Exalead-based system offered remarkable response times, often within 1/50th of a second even when the application was pulling information directly from PoolCorp’s existing ERP system.
- Exalead’s ability to compress data from its original SQL format resulted in a 10:1 compression reduction, significantly reducing the amount of hardware necessary to deploy the POOL360 solution.
- PoolCorp saved more than $30,000 in hardware costs and licensing fees over alternative SQL-based solutions.
- The Exalead CloudView technology would be an ideal system for an internal enterprise search system.
Founded in 2000 by Search engine pioneers, Exalead is the leading search-based application platform provider to business and government. Exalead’s worldwide client base includes leading companies such as PricewaterhouseCooper, ViaMichelin, GEFCO, WorldBank and Sanofi Pasteur, and more than 100 million unique users a month use Exalead’s technology for search. Today, Exalead is reshaping the digital content landscape with its platform, Exalead CloudView, which uses advanced semantic technologies to bring structure, meaning and accessibility to previously unused or under-used data in the new hybrid enterprise and Web information cloud. CloudView collects data from virtually any source, in any format, and transforms it into structured, pervasive, contextualized building blocks of business information that can be directly searched and queried, or used as the foundation for a new breed of lean, innovative information access applications.
For more information about Exalead visit the firm’s Web site at www.exalead.com. Beyond Search uses Exalead’s technology for its blog indexing demonstration here. Our experience has positive with zero set up hassles and exceptional stablity and performance.
Stephen E Arnold, October 6, 2010
Will Google Catch Apple?
September 21, 2010
Apple is ready to face the music with confidence. Seven years of success with the iTunes Music Store would help any company’s self confidence. Can the giant Google sprint like ‘Usain’ and bolt Apple’s success door with its own planned music store? There’s wide speculation and some relief in the music industry, as reports Reuters article “Apple and Google to Clash in Music Space by Christmas.”
“The music industry hopes to benefit from a battle for control of the mobile phone and computer desktop between Apple and Google,” points out the article, and that this competition could help the digital music market to rise and expand. With the dismal example of Amazon’s music venture, the article says it is not going to be easy even for the giant, as there’s a long lead to ‘catch up’ for Google. We already see Google playing the same catch game with Facebook in social networking, and Microsoft with Google.
The consumer market is a tricky one. Apple may be the “new” Sony. Google may be the “new” Microsoft. The interactions will be fascinating.
Harleena Singh, September 21, 2010
Freebie
Endeca Channels Ecommerce
July 24, 2010
It’s always good to see a company that’s blazing a trail into e-commerce and that’s exactly what Endeca is up to with the recent announcement titled, Endeca Unveils Endeca Multichannel Commerce with Hybris.
This will bring together their industry leading user experience and capabilities in contextual merchandising to bolster the path they’re clearly working on in ecommerce. These people have been able to bring their years of experience to the Endeca Multichannel Commerce with Hybris and offer a product that has a lower cost and caters to both customer and company needs.
Established in 1997, Hybris has a proven track record of profitability and growth and Endeca is a leading provider of search applications. This next generation commerce application is clearly indicative of Endeca putting more wood behind its ecommerce opportunities.
Rob Starr, July 24, 2010
Freebie
Alibaba Vendio: Probing Endeca and Google in eCommerce
June 29, 2010
Hong Kong-listed Alibaba.com, the business-to-business unit of Alibaba Group, is one of China’s okay Internet companies. I don’t think too much about China because it is a long, long way from the pond filled with mine run off here in Harrod’s Creek. My hunch is that the eCommerce companies don’t think too much about Alibaba either. That may change. Navigate to “Alibaba.com to Acquire Vendio,” and you will learn that Alibaba is going to acquire “a multi-channel e-commerce company providing a one-stop solution for small businesses that are selling online across multiple channels.” If this is the same Alibaba with which I am familiar, the tie up with Vendio could give those looking for a scalable eCommerce solution another option. The new story said:
The company says that from the Vendio Platform, merchants can source products from its supplier network and sell through channels such as eBay, Amazon, and their own Vendio-supported store. It adds that this platform is offered on Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud-computing model to help businesses increase their sales while managing costs to enhance their profit margin.
The implications of this deal range from price competition to more integrated back end functions. Google may be able to move forward without much concern. Google’s eCommerce solution is a recent innovation. Google’s ability to glue components together may allow the juggernaut to push Alibaba and Vendio to the curb. Endeca, working with somewhat different methods, may find itself having to deal with Amazon and the Alibaba Vendio duo. Yahoo remains a potential player in this eCommerce sector. My recollection is that Yahoo owns or owned a stake in the company. Amazon is an aggressive player, and it may have to adapt to Alibaba Vendio as well.
Alibaba has search technology, so this deal if it goes through will deliver what I call “search enabled processes.” I know that process is one of the words that put people to sleep. But despite the notion’s lack of sizzle, SEPs are going to be an increasingly important in the world beyond search. In fact, at the October Lucene Revolution, there will be some interesting sessions on this very topic.
Stephen E Arnold, June 29, 2010
Freebie
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
