Protected: Can The David Huddle Slay The Microsoft Goliath?
December 21, 2011
Search Engine White Papers
December 20, 2011
Anyone looking for guidance in advance of starting a new search engine project, might want to take a look at these search engine white papers which I came across by chance the other day. Search Technologies is probably the most experienced company out there when it comes to implementing search engines, and these white papers, collectively, provide a pragmatic perspective on the search engine world. Titles include the provocative “Glass Box Approach to Enterprise Search” and “Making the Most of Search Navigators.” Worth a read if you’re into search engines. Recommended resource at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, December 21, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Oracle: Search Will Not Reverse the Downturn
December 20, 2011
The financial news about Oracle is typical bad news with the happy bunny hop. Navigate to “Oracle Falls Short on Weak Software Sales” or any of the stories reporting the financial basics. Here’s a taste of the December 2011 financial report:
The company reported a profit of 54 cents per share on $8.8 billion. The results fell short of the consensus view that Oracle would report sales of $9.23 billion and a per-share profit of 57 cents. Oracle shares, which had risen by 56 cents, or 2 percent, during the regular trading session, to close at $29.17, fell sharply in after-hours trading. As of 4:15 pm ET, Oracle shares were trading down $1.72, or 6 percent, on the news. In the plus column, Oracle said its operating margin on a non-GAAP basis improved to 45 percent, and that it expects those margins to keep rising. Operating cash flow grew by 45 percent, as well, to $13.1 billion.
Financial PR speak is tough to figure out. My hunch is that Oracle squeezed out costs to pump up the profit. Going forward Oracle has to do better. Once the downturn takes hold, it costs a lot of money to reverse the slide. Maybe Oracle will work magic with search? The company now owns and has to pump support and research resources into:
- Secure Enterprise Search or SES11g
- Triple Hop, if it still is around
- Endeca, the $1.1 billion bundle of MBA inspired search applied to ecommerce, the enterprise, business intelligence, and just about any other niche the B-School brigade can identify
- RightNow, a content and search service for customer support which, as you know, I interpret as “methods for preventing a customer to communicate with an informed human”
- InQuira, the blend of two search firms which is in the natural language processing game as applied to customer support. See item 4 above
- Oracle’s structured query language which is the database administrators’ favorite method of locating an item within an Oracle table.
The role of search at Oracle is to drive services, customization, opportunities for upselling and cross-selling, and “synergies”.
Will search provide a stream of significant revenue stream for Oracle? No. The deterioration of traditional database revenue, in my opinion, is part of a structural shift in computing. The search acquisitions make it easy for the 1,000 new sales professionals to get appointments, but a meeting is not a sale. Oracle’s hardware business may make Endeca-powered systems run with more speed, but will Endeca’s customers opt for an Oracle server or bite the bullet and look for an alternative like Lucid Imagination, PolySpot, or some other open source centric search solution? Endeca touts its analytics, but based on our work, next generation analytics vendors like Digital Reasoning make Endeca’s methods look a little like a 1998 Buick next to a 2012 Ferrari 458 Italia Spider.
Search will help, just nor deliver a gusher of cash. Search is not the answer to Oracle’s revenue challenges. I hope I am wrong. So do our customers who are dependent on Oracle and looking at options which appear to cost less.
Stephen E Arnold, December 21, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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Harsh Words for SharePoint Server 2010
December 20, 2011
Microsoft SharePoint users could hardly contain their excitement when the company announced they would be releasing SharePoint Server 2010. There were some lofty expectations for this upgrade, but it seems many users were left dissatisfied with the improvements and innovations that they found. Bjorn Furuknap, one of the disgruntled users, took to his blog to discuss where he thinks Microsoft went wrong.
Furuknap says in his post, SharePoint Server 2010 Isn’t Really Ready for Enterprise Applications – And What Microsoft Should Do About It, that SharePoint 2010 is:
“riddled with bugs that prevent it from being a great platform for building enterprise or professional applications.” He blames the “lousy” coding for many of the problems and says that the product “lacks virtually everything that makes it sellable, including the price.”
Furuknap says that Microsoft “isn’t able to move quickly enough to compete with much more agile and nimble companies” and we must add that his analogy of an elderly person wearing hip-hop clothes conjured up some funny images.
So the question is… can a start up company beat Sharepoint? It certainly seems that way. Companies like Box.net and Inforbix are offering the enhancements that users are looking for. These companies are simplifying the process, enhancing the reliability and making their product cost-efficient. Watch out because this time David just make take out Goliath.
Jennifer Wensink, December 20, 2011
Protected: SharePoint Ranks High on New Enterprise Search Markertscope
December 20, 2011
United Nations and Its Tech Challenges
December 20, 2011
From the “Why Am I Not Surprised” Department. News Flash.
UN Computer System Failure
A flub at the United Nations— an estimated nearly $400 million flub– has been made public as UN officials are scrambling to get the botched project back on track. Perhaps “flub” is too strong? Maybe in UN speak, the error was an administrative concern. Yes, that’s it. Administrative concern.
The United Nations’ project, known as Umoja, is a computer and software system that promised to reform the organization but has been at a standstill since June. Umoja, which was intended to be an administrative system to cut down on waste and fraud, was led by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Fox News’ article, “UN’s Botched Computer-System Overhaul: A Major ‘Failure’ of Ban Ki-Moon’s Management” tells us more:
Ban’s officials are scrambling to get the jinxed project known as Umoja (Swahili for unity) back on track after a key UN budget committee heard from Ban’s office last week that the sweeping information technology overhaul, already a year behind schedule, won’t be finished until 2015, three years beyond the original target date. The committee also said it was “deeply disturbed and dismayed” by the UN’s “apparent lack of awareness and foreknowledge” about the sputtering status of the project.”
This is entropy from top to bottom. Is this the UN’s approach to information management? It appears that guessing about technology may not work and the organization should probably make more solidified plans before pushing such a large and costly project forward. From peacekeeping to computing, the UN is rowing against the current of competence in my opinion.
Andrea Hayden, December 20, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint 2010 Lags Behind in Social Features
December 20, 2011
Beyond Search has written extensively on social media and implementations that help to achieve a higher level of social media integration. Recently, we have found more reporting devoted to the incorporation of social features into an organization’s enterprise solution. Bjorn Furuknap gives his insight into SharePoint 2010’s social functionality in his lighthearted blog entry, “Why SharePoint 2010 Social Features Suck.”
Try to get the activity feed to behave like the FaceBook activity feed and add simple things like a ‘Like’ or ‘Comment’ functionality to the feed . . . Try creating an ad-hoc filter of the activity feed, for example to implement a ‘Social Groups’ functionality where a temporary team, say the people in an organization responsible for the next department annual review, can organize their activities into a single activity feed. It turns out that the way the activity feed is implemented is so locked down and restricted that seemingly simple extensions like these are virtually impossible to create.
So how does an organization tackle both its social and enterprise needs? There are several good third party solutions out there, including Fabasoft Mindbreeze, who are devoting time and attention to social features. Fabasoft Mindbreeze has received the prestigious KM World Trendsetting Product of the Year 2011, making it the fourth year in a row that the Austrian enterprise solution took home the prize. In its previous win in 2010, its social media functionality was sited as a major factor.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise covers corporation -wide heterogeneous document stores and data sources such as email systems, file systems, databases, document management systems, intranets, the internet and social media.
We agree with Furuknap that social features, and social media functions, are just now being developed and implemented into enterprise solutions. Microsoft has never been one for rapid adoption or innovation, so SharePoint is suffering a bit in the social department. To meet your organization’s social needs we recommend seeking a smart third party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, and avoiding unnecessary aggravation.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 20, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Use SurfRay to Process Excel Import
December 19, 2011
Manufacturing Gains New Taxonomy
December 19, 2011
Most people commonly think of biology classifications when they hear the word taxonomy. However, it is a broader concept and Wand Inc. has developed taxonomies for numerous topics from medical specialties to corporate policy. The article, WAND Manufacturing Taxonomy Now Available discusses the advantages of their new manufacturing taxonomy.
Wand says that this taxonomy works well for companies with a document management project and has a need:
“to tag these documents based upon manufacturing process or concepts.” This taxonomy “covers manufacturing processes, quality control, manufacturing sales, manufacturing sales, manufacturing accounting, engineering and design, planning and more.”
Thus far, Wand had received overwhelmingly positive feedback on their latest addition.
Taxonomies are becoming an important tool and are enhancing the manufacturing process. What we really like is that it works not only with project data management systems, but also with the more advanced software solutions like Inforbix. Inforbix can use the existing taxonomies and get more out of your product data. These are revolutionary changes from revolutionary companies.
Jennifer Wensink, December 13, 2011
SharePoint 2010 Not Ready for Enterprise
December 19, 2011
SharePoint is broad, powerful and widely adopted, but its drawbacks are also commonly publicized. Not known for its ability to innovate rapidly, Microsoft suffers from a lack of agility, especially in fledging applications. Bjorn Furuknap tackles the drawbacks of SharePoint 2010 in, “SharePoint Server 2010 Isn’t Really Ready for Enterprise Applications–And What Microsoft Should Do About It.”
With SharePoint 2010, there’s a new ballgame, but sadly, it’s riddled with bugs that prevent it from being a great platform for building enterprise or even professional applications . . . It may just be that I’m working with more ‘enterprise’ projects now than earlier, but it seems to me that the issues I see with SharePoint 2010 are more serious and obvious than in 2007.
Some of the specific examples Furuknap lists include Office document formatting and the immaturity of social features. He blames SharePoint’s shortcoming on their (unsuccessful) shift to innovation at the expense of a stable and basic platform. Perhaps he is right. But who do you turn to in order to keep up with fast pacing technology? We think third party solutions are the answer, and one we really like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. The industry must be thinking the same thing, as Fabasoft recently received the KM World Trendsetting 2011 Product of the Year.
’Our focus on agility, quality, usability and style in the monthly shipments of our latest product innovations enables us to integrate and implement client requests into our product development rapidly and sustainably. In addition to our on-premise offering, everyone can now try out our product in the Cloud, immediately. This is a possibility much appreciated by our clients and partners alike,’ says Daniel Fallmann, founder and managing director of Mindbreeze Software GmbH.
Furuknap has a point. Microsoft needs to get back to the main thing, creating a stable and effective enterprise base. However, ease and functionality can be achieved despite the challenges if a smart third party solution is adopted.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 19, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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