Protected: Silverpoint’s Last Chance at Greatness Partnered with Sharepoint
January 6, 2012
Two Big Outfits Knee Jerk Forward in Mobile Apps
January 5, 2012
We track the enterprise applications market on a daily basis. I keep the content separate, but I noticed two unrelated stories this morning and both of them triggered thoughts about information access. In my opinion, one cannot easily do “work” today unless it is possible to access, find, tap into, or otherwise get one’s mental paws around digital information. Those struggling with information overload are desperate for solutions; hence, the Big Data boomlet. There are companies which are increasingly isolated from where the information action is, and increasingly these companies are taking actions that would have made little sense just three years ago. Today crazy acquisitions do not raise a pundit’s blood pressure.
Example 1: Point your browser to “FT Buys Its Web App Maker; CEO Ridding’s Memo.” The Financial Times publishes the orange business newspaper and has a juicy chunk of the Economist, the touchstone of the MBA subculture. A couple of years ago, the FT dumped the wax museum, and I thought the outfit was going to focus on its brand and content. After an exciting brush with digital craziness in the now offline Newssift service, the FT is embracing mobile applications or apps.
I found this passage notable:
Assanka launched the HTML5 Web app with the paper’s in-house product team in June 2011, declaring “the craze for native apps is a short one and we are already seeing it on the wane”.
Wow. Never mind that Thomson Reuters has mobile apps which enjoy a modest audience. Ignore the fact that the Bloomberg app for the iPad is a case example of interface excitement. The FT purchased a mobile app development company. After my spin through a recent mobile app conference in London, I can report that the cultural blend of the FT and its interesting view of online information will interact in some interesting ways with the good folks at Assanka. Yes, interesting.
Example 2: Now navigate to “Confirmed: Deloitte Buys Ubermind, Looking to Play a Bigger Role in Mobile Apps.” This article asserts:
Joining Deloitte gives us a chance to be part of something big—something bigger than we could ever accomplish on our own. By combining our creative and technical chops with Deloitte’s global reach, industry insight, and deep talent, we have the ability to make an unmistakable impact in the industry.
We are also focused on maintaining what was working. The key elements of our business that make us unique will remain the same: our people and culture. We look forward to continued success as part of Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Blue chip consulting and services firms are facing a tough challenge.
First, the best and brightest don’t automatically flock to these companies any longer. Google and Facebook, for example, have more magnetism. Second, the emergence of outfits like Gerson Lehman Group have sucked money from the Blue Chips. GLG offers blue chip expertise at a much more attractive price point. Third, clients are pinching pennies and sometimes are quite happy to hire people who have been terminated with extreme prejudice and will work for less money than a full time equivalent. Fourth, it is tough to market the old fashioned way. Some of the traditional big spenders are retiring and the 20 and 30 somethings prefer to get their business advice without a detour through carpet land. How will a professional services firm leverage Ubermind? My view is that it will not because the culture of what is left of the Big Eight is going to find few protein snack bars in a professional services firm. Accounting is one thing; coding apps is another. Bean counters and coders can be a challenge to blend.
What is the relationship to information retrieval? I see three points which we shall attempt to follow:
First, big outfits are buying companies with core competencies not shared by the purchaser. Management is not exactly the trump card for publishing or accounting firms. You recall News Corp. and its alleged misdeeds. You also my recall the accounting firm which muffed the job at Enron. Now the management skills of these types of professionals will tackle digital information via apps. Long shot I think.
Second, keeping coders on the is difficult. Google goes to great lengths to retain its programmers. How is that working out? About 20 percent of Facebook is former Xooglers. Coders play musical chairs and often end up competing with their former employers. How will publishing and consulting companies cope with these employment behaviors. Maybe sue a programmer?
Third, apps are an interesting development in information access. More importantly, coding an app is an invitation to keep writing checks. The work is never really done. Most apps don’t generate much traction. In the enterprise, apps are making headway, but the consumerization of information access is moving quickly, and I think it is unlikely that outfits like the FT and Deloitte can react quickly enough or sustain the appetite to invest in app cultivation for very long. Yep, I am skeptical.
Why, then, are these firms buying app development companies and not signing a deal for the company to solve a problem? The answer is, in my view, that large companies do not know what to do. Buying a company gives MBAs and clueless managers something to occupy their time. Once the acquisitions have been completed, the real work begins. For the FT and Deloitte, it will be trying to sell enough work to pay for the purchases, sustain technical investment, and manage the technical professionals.
Will information access be affected? Nope.
Stephen E Arnold, February 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Perfection in the Details: Enterprise Search Solutions with SharePoint IVP
January 5, 2012
Today we want to focus on a company that offers a great enterprise search solution, one that can stand alone or work alongside the more common SharePoint infrastructure. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is operated out of Austria. Having won the KM World Trendsetting Product of the Year four years in a row, Fabasoft is now getting positive attention from Gartner and its MarketScope Report.
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise Winter 2012 Release is now available for download.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise is built on 3 pillars: Simplicity, speed, efficiency. The Fabasoft Mindbreeze 2012 Winter Release stands under the motto ‘quicker to the point.’ Perfection is the sum of the details.
Check out the short and helpful YouTube tutorial videos embedded in the page. Each demonstrates a new feature added to the Winter 2012 Release. One particularly useful feature, especially for those already invested in a SharePoint installation, is the additional efficiency added to the SharePoint connector feature.
A survey by German market analysts has shown that practically every second company uses SharePoint. However, in SharePoint only one facet of a company’s knowledge can be presented. The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise 2012 Winter Release puts an end to this shortcoming.
The video tutorial for this new SharePoint feature shows how easy it is to retrieve search results from every facet of an organization’s network, not just the SharePoint infrastructure. Results are not only efficiently retrieved, but sorted and classified. Retrieve an email address? Just click on the address for immediate embedded usability, unlike many other enterprise solutions that only retrieve. No more cut and paste.
Updates such as this one are rolled out monthly for the cloud and quarterly for enterprise customers. Updates are seamless and require no additional customization. If your organization is seeking an intuitive enterprise search solution, Fabasoft Mindbreeze is worth your attention.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Making Sense of Cloud in a World of PLM
January 5, 2012
The key to make cloud solution cost effective is to keep the right balance between enterprise IT requirements and capabilities of cloud-based software. Some of these “enterprisey” cloud requirements are reasonable, and some of them are typical “red-herring”. We are going to watch the process of balance finding in the next few years.
Protected: The Balancing Act of Sharepoint and Taxonomy Development
January 5, 2012
SharePoint Troubleshooting Videos for the Enterprise Weary
January 4, 2012
The GetThePoint Blog is highlighting a series of troubleshooting videos being offered by Microsoft regarding SharePoint and its well-publicized list of common pain points.
As the write-up expresses:
Microsoft’s Technical Readiness team has been building a collection of what they call ‘Break/Fix’ videos that address specific technical issues when using Office 365 . . . The Microsoft SharePoint End-user Content team is investigating creating similar quick videos that address specific pain points for SharePoint, and would apply to both O365 online and on-premises versions.
While we understand the need for online assistance, especially in terms of quick fixes, the real issue lies in the fact that so many of these fixes are needed in the first place. SharePoint has never promised to be a complete solution, an out-of-the-box application that needs no further tweaking. However, the extent to which SharePoint has to be customized and manipulated leads us to believe that a third-party solution might be a less painful enterprise option.
A third party solution worth a second look is Fabasoft Mindbreeze and its suite of solutions. Receiving the KM World Trendsetting Product Award for the fourth consecutive year in 2011, Mindbreeze is often lauded for its ability to be customized, but also extremely efficient out-of-the-box.
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Appliance as a pre-packaged solution (hardware and software) offers a quick and easy way to enjoy a high-end enterprise search solution out-of-the-box. The product is ready to use within in a very short timeframe. ‘We make it easy for our customers. We deliver the ready-to-run appliance and configure it together with the customer via an online meeting. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise is then ready for use.’ – Daniel Fallmann describes some of the advantages of the solution.”
Fabasoft Mindbreeze works as a standalone enterprise solution, or can be used to enhance an existing SharePoint infrastructure through the Mindbreeze Connectors offerings.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 4, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: The Cloud Yields to a Typo
January 4, 2012
Do Not Put the PLM Cart before the Data Management Horse
January 4, 2012
The new age PLM systems bring in much needed maturity to enable consistent Engineering Data Management, collaboration and visualization of different CAD formats. This leads to a detailed examination of the way the enterprise is organized to work with engineering assets, and because it addresses data structures, it leads to questions about product structures.
Creative Tip to Avoid Indexing in SharePoint Fast
January 4, 2012
At his Tech and Me blog, Mikael Svenson provides a unique search tip in “How to Prevent an Item from Being Indexed with FAST for SharePoint.” Keeping an item from being indexed in FAST using the meta data or text of a file has long been considered next to impossible. Svenson, however, has found a way, and that way is through profanity. Yes, you can use the Offensive Content Filter to your advantage. The article explains:
The thing about the offensive content filter is that it will prevent documents from being indexed if they contain a certain about of bad language. If you get embarrassed by such words, then skip reading 🙂 “So now we have a stage which can drop items, the rest is to assign enough bad words to ‘ocfcontribution’ to get above the threshold it triggers on.
See the write up for a detailed description of how to implement this creative approach.
Svenson notes one important caveat: if you have any documents containing profanity that you actually want to have indexed, this solution may backfire. Avoid difficulties by tapping the deep search expertise of Search Technologies.
Iain Fletcher, January 4, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Common Pain in SharePoint
January 3, 2012
SharePoint brings just as much pain as it does joy in many circumstances. But one does not have to look too hard to realize how common certain SharePoint pain points are in the enterprise realm. The solutions to these SharePoint issues can be just as painful as the issues themselves. Consultants and third-party firms do not always live up to their promises. A SharePoint blogger gives us his take in, “SharePoint – To the Pain!”
As he points out:
One of the pains many of us have experienced is the sting of inexperienced SharePoint ‘experts.’ These people are giving bad advice in their blogs. These people are in ‘expert’ SharePoint firms charging us an arm and a leg and doing bad work. It’s rampant, and I’ve experienced it as a full time employee working for a large corporation paying a HUGE amount for SharePoint ‘experts’ who were breaking things and had NO CLUE what they were doing.
We want to emphasize that not all SharePoint experts and consulting firms are bad. The opinion above is merely that of the blogger. However, a bit of caution is a good rule of thumb when choosing an outside party to assist in SharePoint solutions. SharePoint is not an out-of-the-box enterprise solution. In order to be effective and efficient, third party solutions should be added onto an existing SharePoint framework.
This is where we think an option like Fabasoft Mindbreeze is smart. Offering an entire suite of solutions, Mindbreeze is neither excessive in cost nor disappointing in performance. Their Connectors offerings allow Mindbreeze to work alongside SharePoint, Exchange, and a variety of other applications. The Mindbreeze enterprise solution can stand alone or improve an already existing enterprise infrastructure.
As the optimum search and information access solution, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise facilitates the comprehensive incorporation of all electronic data repositories. Data sources and storage systems are connected to Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise via Fabasoft Mindbreeze Connectors.
While a bit of caution is necessary, there are good third party SharePoint solutions out there. Find one that works for you and enjoy the ease and efficiency that it can offer.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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