Inteltrax: Top Stories, April 23 to April 27
April 30, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, problems in the data analytics world and how they are overcome.
“The Trouble with Big Data and Social Media” took a look at the overwhelming glut of info brought on by social media and how analytics looks to wrangle it.
“Big Data Law Could Smooth Bad Government PR” actually looks to smooth over a prior problem. The government appears to be making nice with big data companies after threatening its reputation in a data mining suit.
“Big Data Downfall Not Believable” zeroes in on the naysayers of big data and proves them wrong at every turn.
As with any burgeoning industry, there are lows that go along with the highs. Often, like with the above stories, you can learn a lot about how people handle these rough patches. You can bet we’ll be studying these moments along with the highs every day.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
April 30, 2012
Prepare Your Organization for SharePoint 2013
April 30, 2012
SharePoint users are hotly anticipating the release of SharePoint 2013. Will the changes be large or small? How will it affect an organization’s existing infrastructure? Market Watch turns hypothesis into practical action, discussing the upcoming release and also preparations that you can take now to prepare your organization. Read the full report in, “Eight Ways to Prepare for the Next Release of SharePoint Now.”
Quest Software, a provider of enterprise tools for SharePoint, offers the following:
Microsoft is gradually revealing details on what users can expect in the next version, which many anticipate will be available in early 2013. With widespread expectations beginning to surface around social capabilities, the cloud, and a new interface, the early anticipation indicates users are already thinking about what’s next for SharePoint. As organizations start considering the next version, there are many ways they can prepare the environment to gain immediate benefits now, and be ready to quickly take advantage of new features later.
Quest goes on to layout what it calls a “next version readiness” plan. However, we think that things could be made a bit simpler. Microsoft is known for its ritualistic three-year cycle of software overhaul. However, smart third-party enterprise solutions like Fabasoft Mindbreeze update on a timetable that is much less disruptive. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise unveils new releases quarterly for on-site installations, and even more often for Cloud installations.
Updates are performed seamlessly, requiring no major overhauls or contingency plans. Rather, updates make the user experience even more pleasant. Above all, findability and efficiency are increased with Mindbreeze, whether it stands alone or works in tandem with an existing SharePoint infrastructure. Explore the entire suite of offering by Fabasoft Mindbreeze and see what they can do to improve your organization’s information management system.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 30, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
PLM Gives Innovation Wings
April 30, 2012
As the many benefit of a customized product lifecycle management (PLM) solution is circulating throughout industries many are finding that despite their initial belief that PLM was for CAD based enterprises only, PLM can in reality be applied to almost any business application to cut costs, streamline processes and speed up production. A recent blog post, “PLM: A New World of (More) Collaboration and Innovation”, on Technology Evaluations Centers, explains some of the benefits just about any company will realize should they adopt a PLM solution.
Innovation, being vital to the success of any enterprise, is helped in spades by PLM. As the article explains,
“Innovation is much more than a buzzword in the PLM world and it doesn’t only refer to new exciting products or services – it’s more about finding more creative and practical ways to design, manufacture and maintain products. It’s a reality, just like collaboration, and the two are inseparable. PLM users were the first to understand that innovation must involve all departments of the company, as well as customers and business partners.”
Because innovation is the only way a company can survive these difficult economic times we support not only the ideas of the blog post but also companies espousing innovation while offering PLM solutions. Inforbix, a company specializing in helping companies find, reuse and share data within a global PLM solution, believes in innovation across the board. There customized data management solutions are the jumping off point for their clients to achieve their innovative goals.
Catherine Lamsfuss, April 30, 2012
How Does Microsoft Fare in the CRM Race?
April 28, 2012
Social, Mobile, and Cloud. These three are the main components of CRM. All of these allow users to connect anytime, anywhere, and any way they want. And Microsoft aims to incorporate all of these elements into their Microsoft Dynamics CRM Anywhere, which is due to be launched in 2Q of this year.
In the mobile aspect, they support all major tablet and smartphone OS including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone. On the social side, Microsoft has Facebook, Twitter, andLinkedIn integration. They even have an Activity Feed that facilitates internal communications (ergo better service delivery and happier customers). In the cloud realm, Microsoft aims to do whatOracle and SAP have already implemented – a hybrid cloud strategy.
But are the efforts of Microsoft to compete in the CRM arena enough? The blog post entitled “Microsoft – Convergence at Last?” at Free Social CRM .COM answers this sufficiently:
“What’s become increasingly clear is that Microsoft due to pressure from the bottom (customer side) up and due to pressure… generated internally is beginning to seriously open up their thinking and step up their efforts to compete in the market… Some of their thinking and actions are incredibly smart, some just table stakes, but they also remain deficient in a few critical areas that they need to make them competitive at the enterprise level particularly.”
While the new features of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM line will help them compete better with the industry veterans, they still have a lot to worry about. They have their traditional competitors like Oracle’s Fusion and Siebel CRM, SAP CRM, Salesforce.com, and Sage as well as startups that have the potential to compete like SugarCRM.
Microsoft’s activity in the CRM field has been on and off for several years that their commitment seems questionable. We have yet to see how they will manage in the functionality-and-feature war this time. Will Fast Search morph into a customer support solution, a path followed by search vendors Coveo and Vivisimo.
Lauren Llamanzares, April 28, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Goes Fully Mobile
April 27, 2012
With each of its quarterly releases highly anticipated, Fabasoft Mindbreeze has made exceptionally newsworthy headlines with its Spring 2012 Release. Read what Daniel Fallmann, founder of Fabasoft Mindbreeze, has to say:
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze 2012 Spring Release is specially designed for tablets and smartphones. Everything that Mindbreeze could previously do on a desktop it can now do on tablets and smartphones too. Apple, Microsoft or Android – it makes no difference. This is important to us, since we’ve been working on strategy 100 for many years – 100% functionality on all platforms.
With more and more business being conducted on mobile devices, Fabasoft Mindbreeze is truly ahead of the pack in its adoption of mobile technology. The Spring 2012 Release seals their victory over the competition in this area. Instead of just being “more” capable of mobile searching than its competitors, Fabasoft Mindbreeze is now completely capable of conducting all enterprise functions from mobile devices, regardless of the platform.
Additional improvements include those made to Fabasoft Mindbreeze Insite, a solution that seamlessly integrates between an organization’s enterprise and its public facing web presence, insuring that the web site is always up to date. Internal users also get continuous updates without having to initiate a search.
Mindbreeze InSite integrates itself smoothly. You can now make your website searchable in the Cloud with InSite and make this data instantly available to internal users. In this way your website becomes a company- internal information center with maximum synergy effects. To exaggerate it slightly, new products, blog posts etc. concerning the company no longer need to be distributed via e-mail – instead the website automatically becomes the knowledge platform for everyone.
We have always been a fan of the smart solutions by Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Their adherence to intuitive quarterly updates is another strong selling point, with the Spring 2012 Release giving many organizations a reason to consider a second look.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 27, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Team Centric Focus All the Rage with Sopheon
April 27, 2012
Competition in the global marketplace is fierce no matter in which industry one may work. Product lifecycle management is no exception making constant innovation the only successful strategy to stay in the game. A recent Yahoo! Finance article, “Latest Version of Sopheon PLM Software Helps Innovators Tackle “New Normal” of Economic and Market Turbulence”, explains how one PLM provider is doing just that by focusing on the needs of team leaders as well as team members during projects rather than just the nuts and bolts of traditional PLM solutions.
The problem, according to the article, is as follows:
“Traditional project management methodologies and tools depend upon establishing detailed requirements, scope and timetables at the beginning of each project and rigidly carrying them through to the end. In today’s world, such inflexible granularity can have devastating impact on business performance, “hand cuffing” an organization’s ability to adjust innovation projects in response to shifting conditions. The consequences: wasted resources, slow time-to-market and lost opportunity.”
Sopheon’s focus on team members’ needs during the PLM processes is not new. Other companies such as Inforbix have long believed that for any PLM solution to be successful the needs of all users must be addressed leading the company to create personalized data management solutions for each client immersed with copious customer support. Inforbix’s focus is on enabling clients to find, share and reuse data in such a way as to overcome the problems of traditional PLM solutions as the article so eloquently wrote.
Catherine Lamsfuss, April 27, 2012
Breaking Down SharePoint
April 26, 2012
Tim Anderson breaks down the nuts and bolts of SharePoint, what it is and what it is not, in “Making Sense of SharePoint 2010.” Anderson gives an overview:
Microsoft calls SharePoint a ‘business collaboration platform,’ a suitably vague description for a multi-faceted product. SharePoint can be a content management system for an internal or external website, a document management system, a business search portal, and more. So what is SharePoint really? Technically, it is an ASP.NET application which runs on Internet Information Services (IIS), Microsoft’s web server, and which stores most of its data in a SQL Server database. Conceptually, it is the outcome of Microsoft’s efforts over many years to create a web storage system, a document repository accessible via a web browser.
SharePoint has become ubiquitous, and almost obligatory, yet little writing is dedicated to what SharePoint is at its heart. Instead, much talk is devoted to customization options. But if we see it for what it is, perhaps we can also recognize that there are other options. There are alternatives to installing an overwhelming SharePoint infrastructure and then spending countless resources on customization processes.
Check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze for instance. The Mindbreeze solutions are more than search, extending into mobile, web site, and enterprise realms.
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.
Perhaps most valuable, Fabasoft Mindbreeze ensures that all of their solutions work alone, or as a compliment to an existing SharePoint infrastructure. Mix and match Mindbreeze offerings to get the customization your organization wants without all the headaches and extra work.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Siemens’ Newest Software Focuses on Data Management
April 26, 2012
In a constantly changing world economy the need for product lifecycle management (PLM) for almost every industry is becoming more and more evident. This need is driving PLM providers to continually change and improve their PLM solutions to meet the needs of clients. Siemens PLM, one of the leaders in the industry, has recently released Teamcenter 9 with vital components to better support the onslaught of data that can choke unprepared companies.
A recent Market Watch article, “Siemens PLM Software Introduces Teamcenter 9; Enables Better Decision Making in Product Development”, explains the changes to Siemens’ newest Teamcenter version and how it relates to end users.
“…(B)ecause today’s products often have multiple options and variations, Teamcenter content management supports configuration-driven documentation that reuses common components of text, graphics and meta-data. This provides efficient, context-based multi-channel publishing to support the need for multi-media delivery on different devices and in multiple languages to support global markets.”
The need for content management is not new. In fact other PLM providers have focused their entire software lines on such data management issues. Inforbix, another PLM provider with an excellent reputation in customer support, believes that enabling clients to find, share and reuse data is the key to PLM success. By basing their software solutions on this principle they have grown into a highly respected and influential leader in the PLM community.
Catherine Lamsfuss, April 26, 2012
The Lifecycle of SharePoint
April 25, 2012
Bjorn Furuknap is a longstanding SharePoint blogger and expert. His piece, “Could SharePoint 2013 be SharePoint 2012?” is not notable so much for its predictions as it is for its explanation of the SharePoint lifecycle of development. Furuknap’s hypothesis, which he ultimately refutes, is that the projected release of SharePoint 2013 could in fact be a SharePoint 2012 release, flouting the traditional three-year cycle.
He explains:
I know the cycle at Microsoft says it should be three years between a major Office release, but with the state of completion of Windows 8, and with the new Metro interface making an appearance, perhaps Microsoft aims to get Office 15 out as soon as possible, maybe even in 2012. It wouldn’t make any sense to leave SharePoint behind then. Microsoft would want the Office client suite to take advantage of the latest and greatest, and that leads me to believe that if Office comes out named 2012, then SharePoint will be so too.
From this we see that the Microsoft web is tightly woven with many interconnecting parts. With Furuknap’s article a bit dated, we are now more certain that SharePoint 2013 will indeed be SharePoint 2013, even if released in 2012. But what is interesting is the tight lid that Microsoft keeps, rigidly scheduling updates even when other competing technologies have passed them by.
Take Fabasoft Mindbreeze for instance. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a third-party vendor offering a suite of solutions including Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. Standing alone or working in tandem with an existing SharePoint infrastructure, Mindbreeze works hard to meet the intuitive needs of its users. Updates are released quarterly for on-site installations, the latest edition being Spring 2012. Updates are even more frequent for Cloud users.
If third party vendors are responding to customers’ needs quickly, releasing updates to keep pace with competing and complimentary technologies, we think Microsoft could make it a point to do the same thing. In the meantime, explore the offerings by Fabasoft Mindbreeze and see if they can provide the efficiency and flexibility your organization needs.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 25, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
PLM Visual Capabilities
April 25, 2012
Many potential users of product lifecycle management (PLM) products who are proficient in computer-aided design (CAD) can be initially reluctant to adopt such data management solutions because they fear that their view of development processes within the PLM context will be less robust than that offered by the CAD-based applications to which they are accustomed.
In his blog entry entitled “Siemens PLM Software’s Active Workspace Mines Product Data” that recently appeared in Ray Kurland’s Blog, Ray Kurland writes that he is encouraged by the potential applications of the high-definition (HD) visual environment offered by Siemens PLM Software’s newly announced Active Workspace (AWS) Version 1 and explains the innovative capabilities of this emerging technology:
“Exactly what is HD PLM? It’s not a product, but an architectural framework. HD-PLM, announced two years ago, provides a technology foundation enabling Siemens product development team to produce a common set of integrated software tools that will identify, capture and collate the massive amount of information available in manufacturing enterprises, and apply meaning to that data using an intuitive visual environment.”
Inforbix also offers innovative, scalable, and cost-effective data management solutions with its cloud-based, user-friendly PLM products that enable organizations to efficiently find, reuse, and share their product data.
Tonya Weikel, April 25, 2012
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