PolySpot Technology Makes Big Data Manageable
February 23, 2012
A recent white paper by Beyond Search’s own analyst, Stephen Arnold, “Cutting Big Data Down to Size: The PolySpot Solution,” tackles the issue of high-volume data flow by taking an in-depth look into PolySpot’s Information at Work Solution.
Arnold gives much credit to the France-based company for creating a revolutionary system that offers an easy-to-use solution to Big Data, making data available and thus valuable to companies. Information from ArnoldIT’s investigation is summarized on PolySpot’s website:
PolySpot has developed an innovative approach that makes it possible to deploy a robust frame-work over existing content repositories. The PolySpot technology allows licensees to access information from many different sources and deliver information that answers real-life business questions. Users access the content via applications or apps from mobile devices to desktop computers. The company delivers solutions+apps.
Our team at Beyond Search is glad to see PolySpot offering innovative enterprise search solutions that are much needed in the search enterprise search market place. This technology is necessary in ensuring that information of significant value is not lost in the petabytes of information that is growing daily.
Check out Apprapids for more insight from the ArnoldIT team or direct your browser to PolySpot to download a full-length copy of the analysis.
Andrea Hayden, February 23, 2012
Another Take on Visual SharePoint
February 16, 2012
We noted the excellent article “How to Do Visual Best Bets for Built In SharePoint Search”. Mikael Svenson has done a very good job of explaining the details of an earlier article about best bets (content which may of interest to a user) enhancements to SharePoint FS4SP.
Users find useful suggestions and content flagged as having particular relevance to a query. The suggestions in many systems are in the form of “facets” or highlighted results. Busy users can scan the results list and note the suggestions. A visual component can make it even easier for a SharePoint user to spot potentially useful content.
We learned from Mr. Svenson:
Visual Best Bets is a feature of FAST Search for SharePoint which lets you point to a file with html content to be displayed above your search results. For example an image, Silverlight or flash content can be used to graphically enhance what is linked to the keyword term. The Visual Web Part uses an iframe to accomplish this and loads up your content inside the iframe. This is useful as you can easily edit the html file at will. But why go the extra mile for a separate file, or opt in for FS4SP for this feature? The Best Bet web part support the showing of keywords and keyword definitions. Keyword definitions are formatted as html. And a definition with html formatting is in effect a Visual Best Bet. (If you have more than one Visual Best Bet you want to assign to the keyword you would have to add them all to the same html for this to work.)
We agree, and we want to add that there are numerous other options available to a SharePoint licensee. These range from the integration of visual displays from Microsoft-certified third party developers to custom code. One company with some interesting technologies is Nevron. The firm’s components can convert a SharePoint page into an advanced dashboard or a report. The user no longer looks at a results list. With Nevron-type technology, the user sees a report which answers a specific business question.
At Search Technologies, the technical team can implement FS4SP via PowerShell or other system, integrate third party components, or develop a customized solution to meet a SharePoint licensee’s specific needs. To learn more about Search Technologies’ customization and FS4SP services, navigate to the Search Technologies’ Web site.
Iain Fletcher, February 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Selecting the Right Enterprise Search System for Your Business
January 31, 2012
Companies looking into enterprise solutions will likely be overwhelmed by the variety of options available and may not know the first place to start when considering which product is the right fit for their needs. Susanne Koch’s recent presentation “The Landscape of Enterprise Search” on Pandia.com highlights some of the recent trends in enterprise search and offers advice on how to navigate through the difficult process that is understanding and choosing the appropriate enterprise system for your business. According to Koch:
Recently, many enterprise search vendors have improved the usability, performance, and functionality of their systems.
The presentation discusses several trends that are surfacing in enterprise system development and which vendors are developing these trends. For instance, Koch points out that Endeca is combining structured and unstructured data into their enterprise system to simplify search capabilities, and Microsoft is including integrated social functions to increase searchability.
With so many options available, it’s extremely important for companies to do their due diligence before deciding on an enterprise solution. And take a look that the full presentation for additional information and a suggested list of questions to ask.
As Koch suggests in her presentation:
Allow time and resources to go beyond what you, the buyer, think you want and find out what you really need.
For more information about the study to which Ms. Kock refers, click this link.
Stacey Duwe, January 31, 2012
Freebie
Slaying Data Tigers: The PolySpot Approach
January 26, 2012
A recent study conducted by Mindjet estimated twenty-one minutes a day were wasted searching for data among employees. Although that number seems small upon first glance once the math is done one realizes just how much money that costs companies. The blog post, Employee productivity: 21 critical minutes, on Polyspot’s Web site puts that cost upwards of two weeks’ worth of pay per employee putting a little more bite into that statistic.
So, what is a company to do to eliminate this waste? The answer, according to Polyspot, is quite simple really – utilize a search engine. As the post explains,
Search engines are often seen as a commodity. However, when used properly, they can breathe new life into information distribution within a company, saving employees valuable time that would otherwise be wasted. Now more than ever, with the appearance of so-called “Big Data”, these information asset management technologies provide a strategic gateway to a company’s entire knowledge base, enabling each and every employee to become more flexible, responsive, efficient and productive.
All too often as big data looms over their heads companies throw more and more money into data silos and other data management products thinking the storage of such vast amounts will fix the problem. As the post points out, however, storing data is the least of a company’s problem. As more business applications are being created and added into a company’s system more data is, in turn, being produced. In some instances the applications are meant to manage the data yet in reality only create more.
Without proper search within a larger data management solution companies are doomed. With entire industries existing solely online data will only continue to grow. Complicating the increasing data problem is the ever increasing types of data popping up making traditional search applications irrelevant. To be truly competitive in today’s market companies facing data problems must stop turning to applications to solve their problems and listen closely, rather, to Polyspot’s advice: invest in search.
Catherine Lamsfuss, January 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Sinequa bottles up Pernod Ricard
January 26, 2012
Leading global beverage distributor and producer Pernot Ricard has selected Sinequa to handle its growing data management needs, informs “Pernod Ricard Uses Sinequa to Offer All Its Employees Unified Access to Group Information” at Minesto.
Each separate division of Pernod Ricard, and there are many, has its own intra- or extra- net, and many also have their own Web sites. The press release asserts,
Sinequa was chosen for its ability to implement a solution offering multilingual natural language search and ability to connect quickly with all sources of documents. Indexing, classification and organization of documents of any type and any size has facilitated access for users and administrators with information present in multiple intranets and extranets.
In the future, Pernod Ricard intends to integrate Sinequa tools into its business applications. Sounds like they are happy with their choice.
Pernot Ricard is a global behemoth, producing and distributing many of the top inebriants, like Absolut vodka, Glenlivet scotch whisky, Beefeater gin. . . the list goes on and on. See here for their US page.
Sinequa’s 25 years in the semantics business uniquely equips them for such large-scale projects. In fact, their world-wide customer base includes a number of huge private and public organizations. The company prides itself on crafting intuitive solutions.
Cynthia Murrell, January 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Proving the Value of Fast Search
January 24, 2012
A growing number of companies are specializing Fast services for large companies committed to rolling out SharePoint 2010.
Search Technologies, the largest and best established of these apparently have more than 50 trained/qualified Fast engineers. A number of these were no doubt picked up during 2011, when Microsoft let a lot of them go. That said, Search Technologies were “Fast Alliance Partner of the Year” back in 2006, a while before Microsoft took an interest in the Scandinavian technology company. Since then, they claim to have since delivered more than 40,000 consultant-days of implementation assistance. That’s a significant amount of hands-on experience.
I note that they are actively promoting a Fast for SharePoint proof of concept service.
For large organizations on the edge of a decision, this makes a lot of sense, particularly because the proof of concept aims to show how Fast works with the customer’s own data sets, in a live environment, enabling a cost-effective comparison to be made with the alternative of staying with a base SharePoint search.
Worth a look.
Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
PolySpot Scales Ten Alps Publishing
January 24, 2012
The economic climate may be uncertain, but it is a great day for scaling Ten Alps. PolySpot announced that it closed a deal to implement its next generation, search enabled applications system for a major publisher. The PolySpot system will be deployed for the Link2Portal system.
Olivier Michel, one of PolySpot’s senior managers, told me:
Ten Alps publish more than 200 publications a year and have developed the unique Link2Portal site, to bring together the day’s news, analysis and exclusive opinions across UK and Global Trade, Logistics, construction and infrastructure, energy and sustainable development sectors. This information was previously isolated by each publication or subscriber list and as the volume of data was both growing rapidly, and becoming of increasing value to a widening readership, Ten Alps decided to invest in an information search and access solution to facilitate and enhance access to all of its information assets.
According to Mr. Michel, Ten Alps selected PolySpot because of its flexibility, performance, and implementation speed. The PolySpot system was up and running in three days, including integration of the PolySpot solution with other enterprise applications. PolySpot’s robust enterprise search application programming interface was a pivotal element in this implementation.
Stuart Brown, managing director of Ten Alps, said:
With its simple, open architecture, PolySpot was the only platform capable of providing us with a unique B2B search engine, which optimizes our content.
What makes this implementation significant is that PolySpot uses a range of content, including directory information from an Amazon cloud-hosted CouchDB database, the site’s editorial content (which is managed by Drupal), and the unstructured content of the thousands of publications available as PDF files and e books.
Consequently, PolySpot delivers the type of integrated search experience that some vendors have been describing but delivering only after weeks or months of effort. With PolySpot, a search on Link2Portal lets the user find news, a sector expert’s opinion, the e book for a publication, opened at the right page supported with industry solutions and suppliers information.
Gilles André, the chief executive officer of PolySpot, said:
The aim of Link2Portal is to facilitate information access for visitors to a major UK media group’s Web site. We achieved this objective in just a few days and we are proud to have Ten Alps as a customer.
Founded in 2001, PolySpot designs and sells search and information access solutions designed to improve business efficiency in an environment where data volumes are increasing at an exponential rate.
PolySpot’s solutions offer deep connectivity,so that licensees can access the data they need, regardless of their structure, format or origin. PolySpot’s solutions are based on an innovative infrastructure offering both versatility and high performance, enabling companies to make best use of their assets and rationalizing the strategic costs that today’s businesses and organizations face. PolySpot’s solutions have millions of users worldwide, across all business sectors, with customers including Allianz, BNP Paribas, Bureau Veritas, Crédit Agricole, OSEO, Schlumberger, Veolia, Trinity Mirror and Vinci.
A tip of the search enabled applications hat to the PolySpot team. Autonomy, Endeca, Exalead, and IBM have a frisky competitor on their hands I surmise.
Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
When Services and Software Collide: Oracle in Michigan
January 24, 2012
With Hewlett Packard wanting to be “just like” IBM and Oracle, services and software can collide with interesting consequences. If you have been caught in a failed enterprise search system deployment, you may find “Oracle Demands Judge Dismiss University’s Claims over ERP Failure” meaningful. My understanding is that the software did not work for the client. The client did what unhappy clients to; that is, call the lawyers. Then the story took a fascinating turn:
In December, the school filed an amended complaint that added new allegations, including that Oracle had conducted a “rigged” demonstration of the software package at issue. Oracle’s motion this week responds to that filing, asking that its allegations of fraudulent inducement, gross negligent misrepresentation, grossly negligent performance of contractual obligations and willful anticipatory repudiation of contract be dismissed.
Oh, oh. Consultants could not make the system work because the client alleges that Oracle showed a demo. How often has this happened? Cool demo. Failed reality.
I don’t know how this legal matter will turn out, but consultants who try to implement demos may be over their heads and billing for time to convert dreams into functional software can come back and bite, hard. Clueless licensees have teeth and can be a noisy bicycle card in a software consultant’s wheel.
Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Enterprise Search: Cruising on the Concordia
January 19, 2012
I keep my eyes peeled for useful management examples. Whilst recovering from a minor hitch in the goose liver, I watched the drama of the Concordia cruise ship unfold. The horrific event reminded me of several enterprise search deployments I had analyzed. I was not the “captain” of these enterprise search voyages. I was able to do some post-crash analysis.
To get the basics of the event, you will want to familiarize yourself with the write up in the UK’s Daily Telegraph, “Concordia Disaster: Should a Captain Go Down with His Ship?” In my opinion, the key passage in the Daily Telegraph’s story was:
…leadership entails an obligation to be courageous – morally, physically or both. It is the price of leadership; it is why leaders are more highly regarded and rewarded than the rest of us. But even subordinates in certain professions have the duty to be brave, as the rest of us do not. A soldier is expected unquestioningly to put himself in the way of bullets as a civilian is not.
(But my favorite news item was Cruise Captain Says He ‘Tripped’ Into Lifeboat, Couldn’t Get Out.”
Not Taking Responsibility
The alleged behavior of the captain shares one similarity with enterprise search implementations that sink. The person running the operation shirks responsibility for the disaster. My view is that ego plays a part. The more important factor may be the person’s character. I have reviewed a failed search implementation and had a difficult time determining who was responsible. The procurement team has the thick linen of committee think under which to hide. The information technology manager often keeps well away from search, a behavior conditioned by knowledge that making information findable is often impossible. The chief financial officer just counts the dissipated dollars. Accountants are not implementers. The person charged with the failure is often a young engineer whom those ultimately responsible deem expendable.
The first similarity is that in big disasters those who are responsible do whatever is needed to avoid responsibility. In enterprise search, there is a ship captain. Pretending that a captain does not exist is one interesting characteristic of today’s organizational life. Think Jerry Yang at Yahoo. Recall Leo Apotheker. You get the idea. What about the search system at your company? The National Archives? Amazon’s online store? There are captains responsible. Unfortunately these captains do not get global news coverage for their behavior.
Show Boating
The crash and sinking was a consequence of show boating. The idea is that doing something fancy is appropriate and within the perimeter of the job description is allowed. In enterprise search, the show boating becomes visible when one or more people make suggestions along these lines:
- We need to deliver answer to users, not laundry lists
- Natural language processing is essential to the success of our search system
- We need a taxonomy and semantic technology to make information accessible
- Our system has to work just like Google.
Each of these is similar to the Concordia’s buzz close to shore. Few of those involved in an enterprise search implementation realize how downright expensive, complicated, and resource intensive these “suggestions” become. Vendors go along to keep the contract. The deployment team is thinking about making search headlines and maybe getting a raise and a promotion. Great idea but when the effort sinks the search project, the result is a disaster.
The second similarity between the Concordia and the ill fated enterprise search system deployment is that getting cute can wreck havoc. Now you may say, “Hey, semantic methods will only help our search system.” Maybe, maybe not. My view is that show boating is one characteristic of doomed enterprise search system. The fix? Just do the basics well, then add some special sauce.
Migration Solutions for SharePoint and Office 365 Users
January 10, 2012
The New Year always brings about an avalanche of resolutions, some reasonable and some completely unattainable, as people strive to become a better, slimmer, more productive, smarter, funnier, happier, and/or healthier selves.
Maybe your New Year’s goals are to cut back on coffee, quit smoking, save more money, lose weight, or be better organized? Or maybe your resolution is to figure out a solution for converting those pesky Google Docs to your fancy new enterprise system. If the latter is the case, then Google-users have one more reason to celebrate in 2012, as MetaVis Technologies recently announced in “MetaVis Now Offers Google to SharePoint Migration” that they have created a solution that allows Microsoft SharePoint or Office 365 users to migrate their Google Apps and Google Docs.
According to the MetaVis announcement:
“MetaVis Migrator for Google Apps [http://www.metavistech.com/product/metavis-migrator-google-apps] allows customers to migrate Google content to either a hosted or on-premise-based SharePoint solution while preserving valuable metadata required for compliance and governance policies….With the MetaVis Migrator product line up, customers can migrate content from multiple sources including SharePoint 2010, 2007, 2003, file shares, Exchange Public Folders, Outlook Folders and now Google.”
We know that SharePoint has become the magnet for third-party enhancements. With more than 100 million SharePoint licenses deployed, the demand for SharePoint functionality is rising sharply. Growth in SharePoint was robust in 2011, and 2012 may be another banner year for Microsoft’s most popular enterprise solution.
At Search Technologies, we put the customer first. If a solution requires a third-party component such as MataVis’ or original programming, our engineers have the deep technical know how and engineering expertise to make next-generation information access a reality. To learn more about Search Technologies, point your browser at http://www.searchtechnologies.com.
Iain Fletcher, January 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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