Mobile Apps Reign Supreme Over the Web
January 25, 2012
A recent study by Flurry Analytics shows that American consumers are now using mobile apps more than they are using the web. The article “Mobile Apps Put the Web in Their Rear-view Mirror” reports that “Flurry compares how daily interactive consumption has changed over the last 12 months between the web (both desktop and mobile web) and mobile native apps.”
It took less than three years for mobile apps to overtake web use.
“Flurry found that the average user now spends 9% more time using mobile apps than the Internet. This was not the case just 12 months ago. Last year, the average user spent just under 43 minutes a day using mobile applications versus an average 64 minutes using the Internet.”
They found that consumers use half of their time using game apps, while spending a third of their time using social networking apps which equals ” whopping 79% of consumers’ total app time.”
Even though games and the social network currently dominate the mobile app usage, it is only a matter of time before professional and work apps become commonplace. Product manufacturing is already seeing a shift. Recently, software solutions company, Inforbix introduced it mobile app which allows users to search and access CAD and engineering product data on-the-go from the iPad. This is just the tip of the iceberg for mobiles apps. Their popularity will continue to grow and it will go well beyond Facebook and Farmville.
Jennifer Wensink, January 25, 2012
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
Protected: Simple SharePoint Differences Between Document Libraries and Lists
January 24, 2012
More Efficiency for SharePoint with Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite
January 24, 2012
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Winter 2012 Release gives lots of good reasons to consider their third-party solution for any organization’s enterprise needs. Founder and managing director, Daniel Fallmann, highlights some of the most innovative features of the newest release in, “Our 2012 Winter Release – More Efficiency for SharePoint.”
Fallmann provides some highlights:
The Microsoft SharePoint search is replaced by Fabasoft Mindbreeze, with the added value of information pairing, which extends the search to the entire connected company knowledge – all on one page. So-called search-driven dashboards can also be created. What does this mean? All information of a page is displayed by Web Parts made available by Mindbreeze. A simple configuration is all that’s needed. The displayed content is always up-to-date and to the point. And after the initial configuration, this takes place automatically and maintenance-free. Furthermore, our 2012 Winter Release is the link between the Cloud and Microsoft SharePoint. Data from the Cloud can thereby be integrated just as easily into Micrososft SharePoint.
The Mindbreeze functionality as an add-on, connecting an existing SharePoint infrastructure to the cloud, is a good solution for companies currently struggling with the decision of moving to the cloud. Another major feature worth highlighting is Fabasoft Mindbreeze Insite.
Fallmann continues his discussion:
A further example . . . is Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite. The software achieves what would normally only be possible with intensive maintenance – to keep internet sites constantly up-to-date. Imagine you want to post a current blog article on your internet site. This is normally only possible via the use of personnel resources . . . What if search results could appear without anyone realizing that a search engine is working in the background. In other words: Always up-to-date, without anyone needing to take care of or dedicate working time for it. For example the updating of blogs, news or whatever else you want to post on your site.
The InSite feature seems to be an effective way to maintain a current web presence without devoting extensive work time to the project. So whether your organization is searching for an enterprise solution for the first time or is simply looking for a way to improve a current SharePoint installation, Fabasoft Mindbreeze has many features that definitely warrant a second look.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 24, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Car Industry Relies on PLM
January 24, 2012
The 2012 North International American Auto Show in Detroit is showing off more than the latest and greatest in automobiles. It is also showing off Siemens Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software. The business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division announced that “Siemens PLM Software Technology Used by Nearly All Companies Unveiling New Vehicles at North America International Car Show.”
Siemens has expanded it market share of the global automotive market when two major OEMs replace “their computer-aided design (CAD) and PLM systems with technology from Siemens PLM Software.”
Siemens PLM Software’s world leading technology is used by 15 of the top 16 global automotive OEMs to plan, evaluate and coordinate the development and manufacturing engineering of their vehicles. Siemens PLM Software satisfies the mission critical needs of leading automotive OEMs for managed collaboration across complex engineering functions and throughout the extended supply chain.
The automotive industry has recently made a huge resurgence. It seems to us that PLM has played a huge part in that. There will certainly be more modernization with the help of technology that goes beyond PLM. Take for example Inforbix who is developing technology and tools to help busy engineers make the most of their time by simplifying how they find, re-use, and share product data. We think Inforbix software will help the car manufacturers in the future and zoom straight to the top.
Jennifer Wensink, January 24, 2012
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
Protected: Prepare for SharePoint BLOB Storage
January 23, 2012
Looking Toward SharePoint 2013
January 23, 2012
In the constant conversation surrounding SharePoint, the next SharePoint release seems to always be on the horizon, ever present in the blogosphere. SharePoint 2010 is still relatively new, and yet some experts have already moved on to the yet unknown SharePoint 2013. Mike Walsh discusses this and more in his piece, “End of year look at SharePoint.”
Walsh offers:
SharePoint 2010 came out in May 2010 so we are now just over halfway through the usual three year cycle before the next version of the product . . . Also while clearly most of the developer team have been working on the new version since they virtually left the SP 2010 forums in summer 2010, people from the team such as Bill Baer seemed to have stopped writing anything on SP 2010 and there was even a Microsoft SP 2010 blogger who recently announced the end of his SP 2010 blog articles because he had moved to working with the next version of the product. Whether this means that they are already informing people . . . about what the next version will include is something that I don’t know . . . I do however suspect that if that stage hasn’t been reached yet it will be by maybe May 2012. That would be followed by the first private betas (end summer 2012?) and in time by the first public beta . . .My own guess is that we’ll be back to the October (2013) release date we had for the 2007 products.
It seems to me that Microsoft is stuck in an old-fashioned update routine. Instead of making updates, improvements, and patches a constant fluid process, SharePoint is confined to a rigid three-year release cycle. We wonder if users might be getting a bit tired of the three-year redesign schedule. It is a bit like a lame duck presidency – if something is on the way out then it gets no further attention. Everyone is looking forward to the next thing.
For this and other reasons, we like the flexibility and agility of third-party enterprise solutions. Fabasoft Mindbreeze, for example, releases updates quarterly for on-site installations and monthly for the cloud.
From their web site:
Continuous quality assurance and performance optimization ensure extremely short release cycles. We release a new Mindbreeze Cloud update every month.
If you are looking forward to a day when SharePoint is no longer hindered by the three-year cycle, consider a third-party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, and enjoy the added agility that it brings to your organization’s enterprise needs.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
India Improving Their Product Development Process
January 23, 2012
As product lifecycle management (PLM) grows in the United States and Europe, it has also taken to life in India. Moneylife’s article “Adoption in Automotive and Heavy Engineering Sectors to Drive the $139.5-Million PLM Market Toward $437.9 Million by 2017, predicts Frost & Sullivan” discusses the growth and challenges ahead for India’s manufacturing industry.
Business research firm, Frost and Sullivan, found in their “Strategic Analysis of the Indian Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)” that the “Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) is expected to be in excess of 15 percent during 2010-2017.” They note that:
“Medium-sized enterprises are gradually shifting from traditional CAD components to include lifecycle data management capabilities. Small-sized businesses, being largely CAD-centric and OEM-driven, are yet to completely appreciate the benefits of PLM.”
Although there is significant growth in the industry, it is also faced with the lack of a “highly-skilled workforce who have expertise in a PLM platform,” the cost of training and reluctant employees.
It seems that India’s manufacturing industry is heading in the right direction, but adapting to swiftly changing technology could be the biggest challenge. Technology companies like Inforbix are always developing new, cutting-edge software that changes the manufacturing landscape. Innovation is not going to stop, but we wonder if India will be able to keep up.
Jennifer Wensink, January 20, 2012
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