Operational Efficiencies Improve with Solutions that Deliver Information
October 16, 2012
IBM branched into cloud computing with PureFlex and applications with PureApplications, so seeing them move toward data analytics is not surprising. The TechCrunch article “Meet PureData, IBM’s New Big Box For Big Data,” discusses the latest edition to IBM’s Pure series.
Apparently big players like IBM and Oracle have decided to sell their big box systems and replace the old servers that their customers utilize for legacy software:
They call these boxes converged systems. They essentially are new age mainframes with state-of-the art compute, storage, and networking all in one system. The PureData System is designed to manage petabytes of data. According to IBM, it can manage up to 100 databases and can perform analytics in a matter of minutes versus hours to understand consumer purchases and other data-intensive tasks, such as detecting credit card fraud. It focuses on transactional applications such as e-commerce, customer analysis and analyzing operations.
The combination of IBM’s three Pure strategy will create an all in one solution, but they are stepping into the game a little late. Developers like PolySpot have been providing an all-in-one solution for almost a decade offering a platform that delivers information. Their unique infrastructure component can be used to sort, store and develop innovative and cost-effective applications, while providing users with quick, access to the relevant data necessary to increase operational efficiency and ROI.
Jennifer Shockley, October 16, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Microsoft Mastery Becoming Harder to Find
October 16, 2012
It is often said that the power of a solution and its ease of use are conversely proportional. If a solution is powerful, it will no doubt be very difficult to master, or vice versa. The rule holds very true for SharePoint. Even as SharePoint 2013 is unveiled, highly trained developers are being warned that additional training will be needed. The Redmond Channel Partner covers the issue in, “Office 365, SharePoint and SQL Server: Our Experts Weigh In.”
The author states:
Meanwhile, as the flagship Microsoft database and collaboration platforms become more entrenched, provisioning and managing them have become more complex. The new capabilities and use cases of Windows Server — combined with the new requirements of SQL Server and SharePoint — require organizations to offer extensive new skill sets.
So how is a small or medium size organization supposed to cope with the growing demands? Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers an entire suite of solutions for the enterprise, all designed to be intuitive and powerful, even for an end-user who is not a highly skilled developer. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise is a small third-party solution that adds quality, usability, and style to the enterprise seamlessly. Read more to see if the solution can optimize your organization’s intranet.
Emily Rae Aldridge, October 16, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Googles Plan to Conquer the Enterprise
October 16, 2012
Information Week’s John McGreavy recently doled out some possibly unjustified criticism of Google’s enterprise initiatives in the article, “Google Enterprise, I’m Not Impressed.”
In the article McGreavy accuses Google executives of being overly pompous when discussing the impact of the company’s products on enterprises at the recent InformationWeek 500 Conference.
McGreavy writes:
“Another CIO attendee at the conference questioned Google about its lack of a product road map. Bavor, Google Enterprise’s head of product management, replied with some effervescent, hand-waving description of Google’s process for creating incredible products of all sorts that increase productivity and generate a fabulous (or was it amazing?) experience.
And then Lock, the Google Enterprise VP, attempted to explain the vendor’s development cycle. He explained that Google can’t share much more than a six-month vision because it doesn’t know what it will be doing beyond that time frame.”
McGreavy is not the only person, unsettled by this statement. Will the search giant conquer the enterprise the same way it conquered the Internet? I guess only time will tell.
Jasmine Ashton, October 16, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Automation to Cure Duplicate Content Issues
October 15, 2012
Search Engine Land is shining a light on a common Web site search problem, duplicate content issues. Read the full report in, “An Automated Tool To Eliminate Duplicate Content Issues.”
The author begins:
BloomReach announced a new software product named Dynamic Duplication Reduction (DDR) that aims to eliminate duplicate content issues on web sites. Typically, software tools are known to cause duplicate content issues but this tool promises to reverse it. The tool deeply crawls your web pages and continuously interprets all content on a site. It will automatically discover and act on duplicate pages.
They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and in this case the prevention needed is effective Web site indexing. Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite quickly crawls and indexes all Web site content delivering search results based on relevancy. Misspellings are even corrected with InSite and duplication is prevented. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a longstanding leader in third party solutions for the enterprise. InSite is quickly becoming the icing on the cake of this industry leader.
Emily Rae Aldridge, October 15, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
IntelTrax Top Stories: October 5 to October 11
October 15, 2012
This week’s top stories from the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog focused on the impact of big data analytics solutions on a multitude of different industries.
According to “New Pike Research Report Analyzes Smart Grid Analytics” there will be a spike in smart grid data analytics spending that is forecasted to reach more than $34 billion. The bulk of this spending, which will occur worldwide, will be in the Asian Pacific.
When describing the report, the article states:
“This Pike Research report analyzes the global market opportunity for smart grid data analytics across four key solution segments: meter analytics, grid analytics, asset analytics, and renewables integration for business intelligence, operations, and customer management. The report provides a comprehensive assessment of the demand drivers, business models, policy factors, and technology issues associated with the rapidly-developing market for smart grid data analytics. Key industry players are profiled in depth and worldwide revenue and capacity forecasts, segmented by application and region, extend through 2020.”
“Expert Suggests You Ask Your Analytics Vendor the Tough Questions” explains the importance of advocating for yourself and your business by asking the hard questions when choosing between a myriad of solutions that solve the same or similar data management problems.
The article states:
“SAP customers looking at the possibility of deploying text analytics software within their operations should be diligent about asking vendors lots of questions, according to one expert.
Giving vendors the third degree is especially important when shopping for text analytics technology because there is a wide range of offerings on the market at various levels of maturity, said Hanns Koehler-Kruener, a research director with Stamford, Conn.-based IT research firm Gartner Inc.
Additionally, text analytics technology is still emerging into the mainstream and therefore terminology and performance expectations will vary from vendor to vendor. As a result, the only real way to find out if a particular text analytics product meets specific needs is through questioning and trial and error, the analyst said.”
While most companies see big data as a huge benefit when channeled appropriately, consumers may see it as a threat to their privacy. “The Threat of Big Data” explains how big data can be misused.
The article states:
“What those breadcrumbs tell is the story of your life. It tells what you’ve chosen to do. That’s very different than what you put on Facebook. What you put on Facebook is what you would like to tell people, edited according to the standards of the day. Who you actually are is determined by where you spend time, and which things you buy. Big data is increasingly about real behavior, and by analyzing this sort of data, scientists can tell an enormous amount about you. They can tell whether you are the sort of person who will pay back loans. They can tell you if you’re likely to get diabetes.”
Whether you are looking to utilize big data for good or evil, there are companies out there that are willing to help your company harness data. Digital Reasoning uses automated understanding to take the pressure off employees and gain valuable insights from big data.
Jasmine Ashton, October 15, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Get A Comprehensive Search Strategy Plan from Aspire
October 12, 2012
People tend to doubt the power of a good search application. They take it for granted that all out-of-the-box and Internet search engines are as accurate as Google (only the most powerful in the public eye). The truth of the matter is most businesses are losing business productivity, because they have not harnessed the true potential of search. Search Technologies, a leading IT company that specializes in search engine implementation, managed services, and consulting, is the innovator behind Aspire:
“Aspire is a powerful framework and application platform for acquiring both structured and unstructured data from just about any content source, processing / enriching that content, and then publishing it to the search engine or business analytics tool of your choice.”
Aspire uses a built-in indexing pipeline and propriety code maintained by Search Technologies high standards. It is based on Apache Felix, the leading open source implementation for OSGI standard. OSGI is built for Java and supported by IT companies worldwide. Aspire can gather documents from a variety of resources, including relational databases, SharePoint, file systems, and many more. The metadata is captured and then it can be enriched, combined, reformatted, or normalized to whatever the business needs before it is submitted search engines, document repositories, or business analytics applications. Aspire performs content processing that cleans and repackages data for findability.
“Almost all structured data is originally created in a tightly controlled or automated way.
By contrast, unstructured content is created interactively by individual people, and is infinitely variable in its format, style, quality and structure. Because of this, content processing techniques that were originally developed to work with structured data simply cannot cope with the unpredictability and variability of unstructured content.”
By implementing a content processing application like Aspire, unstructured content is “scrubbed,” then enriched, for better search results. Most commercial search engines do not have the same filters that weed out relevant content from the bad. The results displayed to the user are thus poor quality and are of zero to little use. They try to resolve the problem with custom coding and updates for every new data source that pops up, which is tedious. Aspire fixes tired coding problems, by using automated metadata extraction and manipulation outside the search engine.
As powerful as commercial search engines are they can often lack the refined quality one gets from a robust ISV. Aspire does not follow the same search technology path as its competitors, rather it has designed a new, original solution to provide its clients with a comprehensive search strategy plan to help improve productivity, organization, and data management.
Remember. Search Technologies is sponsoring a meet up at the October 2012 Enterprise Search Summit. More information is available at http://www.meetup.com/DC-Metro-Enterprise-Search-Network/
Iain Fletcher, October 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint Training Essential to Success
October 12, 2012
The secret to a successful SharePoint implementation is in planning and training. Research and Markets has added new training pieces to their class offerings. Herald Online provides a full story in their article, “Research and Markets: Comprehensive Microsoft SharePoint Training – Manage SharePoint Sites like a Professional.”
Read about their latest SharePoint 2010 End User class:
The SharePoint 2010 End User class is for end users working in a SharePoint 2010 environment. The course teaches SharePoint basics such as working with lists and libraries as well as basic page customizations. The SharePoint 2010 Power User training class teaches students to manage SharePoint sites.
This class is hands-on and interactive, with exercises, presentations and readings to ensure students stay engaged and learn the material presented.
Training is important for complicated enterprise solutions, but there are some third party options that focus on intuitive ease of use. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise, one such smart third party solution. Data is given meaning and is made more easily retrievable. Therefore, training is still important, but becomes less urgent. Usability is brought down to the level of a more common user, meaning small or medium size businesses can save time and money on both training and specialized developer positions.
Emily Rae Aldridge, October 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Familiar Architecture and Improvements in SharePoint 2013
October 11, 2012
J. Peter Bruzzese, a writer for InfoWorld’s Enterprise Windows blog, takes a look at what he terms welcome enhancements for SharePoint 2013 in his InfoWorld post, “SharePoint 2013: A Low-Key Update You’ll Love.” Bruzzese first points out that architecturally, the upcoming SharePoint release is similar to its predecessor, but with added benefit of increased support for touch based devices. He has this to say about the overall improvements:
SharePoint 2013’s social networking enhancements provide more interaction options for people in a company, such as via community sites and portals that offer a forum-style experience within SharePoint. The My Sites user interface…has been streamlined. New microblog and newsfeed features allow for shorter conversations and quick updates, similar to what Yammer provides.
He adds that overall SharePoint 2013 is an improvement, but also has this to say:
I only wish that SharePoint was released more frequently, not tied to the three-year cycles of the Office and server lines, so it could better keep up with the rapid changes in social networking, mobile, and other user technology spaces.
Bruzzese points out that greater scalability and integration of FAST Search, rather than being a stand-alone program, are also two improvements. But when it comes to taking advantage of social capabilities and search, we know that FAST has its gaps and users need efficient and easy access to information. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers Enterprise Search with SharePoint Connectors so to easily snap into your existing farm. In addition to all-inclusive search, Mindbreeze creates relevant knowledge by storing data according to type and relevance while processing data in a comprehensible form.
Philip West, October 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
SharePoint Training Videos: Useful but Often Not Enough
October 10, 2012
The long-awaited preview for SharePoint 2013 has arrived and SharePoint gurus are on their way to exploring the collaborative content management platform’s new potential. The new SharePoint does have new strange twists and turns that could confuse even the most experienced SharePoint developer, which is why we are so thankful for Web sites like Microsoft’s TechNet that provide official reference material. Recently, TechNet has launched a series of videos on “SharePoint 2013 Training for IT Pros:”
“Find IT pro-focused how-to training and walkthrough videos with this interactive course about SharePoint 2013 including changes and new features for search, social, plus deployment and performance/scalability.”
Each of the new videos is a training module that focuses on a different aspect of the new SharePoint 2013 deployment. There are a total of fourteen training modules and each has videos and presentations about new features and concepts. For example, Module 1 focuses on a basic overview of the 2013 version with key changes to the SharePoint 2013 Server and SharePoint Foundation 2013. All of the modules cover areas that IT professionals will have questions about, server farms, architecture, social features, customization options, upgrading from older versions, etc.
Module 7: SharePoint 2013 Enterprise Search Overview is the lesson that really caught our attention:
“Learn about the redesigned Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2013 including architectural changes to physical and logical topologies, details about configuration options for crawling, content, and query.”
In the past, SharePoint’s out-of-the-box search solution was not the best search application. The best way to make it work was to rely on ISVs with products designed to augment and enhance SharePoint search. Generally the third-party software was a vast improvement over Microsoft. The new SharePoint search makes the same promises to fix problems from past versions and upgrade it with better features. Module 7 promises to teach about:
“Learn about the redesigned Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2013 including architectural changes to physical and logical topologies, details about configuration options for crawling, content, and query.”
As SharePoint has moved from its old role solely as a collaborative content management platform to a more robust platform with more social features and Web tie-ins, there will be much more for the search engine to peruse.
However, in our experience, a training video is a useful adjunct to other types of professional support. For example, Comperio, a firm with deep experience in search and related activities, offers a range of services that can be tailored to meet the needs of an organization implementing SharePoint and SharePoint search. The company offers search consulting, development, application management services, and “consultants for hire.” To learn more about Comperio’s services which bridge the gap between an instructional video and hands-on implementation, we suggest you check out Comperio services at http://www.comperiosearch.com/services/.
Understanding how SharePoint 2013 has integrated a more powerful enterprise search is the first step to harnessing its new capabilities and empowering the user. Search is a key function that powers many other features on SharePoint. If users cannot find their data, then SharePoint 2013’s key purpose has been lost.
Stephen E Arnold, October 10, 2012
Tips for Creating Content to Attract an Audience
October 10, 2012
Simon Penson started his career as a journalist and magazine editor before turning to the world of online audience creation and has owned and run his own sites. He is also the founder of content led digital marketing agency Zazzle Media, which specializes in content marketing and strategy. In his article, “46 Ways to Kill It with Content,” he concisely delivers a variety of tips to boost online content. Penson includes discussion on creating content ideas and structure, strategy development, as well as content execution and measuring effectiveness. He has this to share about understanding users as part of measuring effectiveness,
Set up goal and funnel tracking as part of any major content creation process and track users through to action. Just ensure that time frames are set in a realistic manner. Too many times this is measured over weeks or a couple of months when it should be a 6-12 month investment that will continue to deliver engaged and targeted visitors for many month to come.
Don’t simply measure outreach by the links earned. Look at referral traffic and brand visibility value also as part of the measurement process.
A successful Web presence depends on having useful and attractive content. MindBreeze InSite understands that an attractive Web site is a company’s digital business card. InSite “turns your website into a user-friendly knowledge portal for your customers. Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite recognizes correlations and links through semantic and dynamic search processes. This delivers pinpoint accurate and precise “finding experiences.” With no installation or configuration required, InSite can save you valuable resources that can otherwise be spent on developing and managing stellar content.
Philip West, October 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
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