Onix Networking will provide cloud-computing services to the Department of the Interior, according to the Lakewood Patch article, “Lakewood Company Lands $35 Million Contract with Federal Government.” The company, founded in 1992, provides services like cloud computing, storage solutions, and Enterprise search. It is also a Google-centric vendor. The article asserts:

“The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said shifting to a cloud-based email system will modernize the ways the agency does business and cut costs, amounting to ‘good government, plain and simple.’

He added that the contract is part of an initiative to ‘leverage modern technology to save up to $500 million in taxpayer dollars by 2020.’

The news may mean more growth for the Detroit Avenue company as it looks to expand into its nearly 40,000-square-foot location in the Georgetown Row half of the former Bonne Bell headquarters at the corner Detroit and Graber avenues.”

What else does this news release mean? Since Onix is a long-standing partner with Google (the first Google Premier Enterprise company to be precise,) it means the Google Search Appliance, at least in the US government market, is still alive and kicking.

Andrea Hayden, May 11, 2012

Sponsored by Ikanow

This hit will cost Oracle dearly. According to the article on ZDNet, “Feds Nix Oracle Blanket Contract,” the government is reported to have spent $388 million with Oracle last year. While the loss may seem like pennies to a company turning over more than $37 billion, the repercussions may be felt more widely. The ZDNet article asserts:

“Neither party is commenting beyond what has already been said but it will almost certainly mean Oracle will need to go back to the negotiating table for unfulfilled contracts. In the meantime, government buyers can be sure that Oracle sales people will be all over them to maximise spend in the run up to Oracle’s year end, which falls 31st May. The Feds can also be sure that Oracle will send in its audit crews, keen to wring out the most they possibly can from whatever is left on the table.”

The implication lies precisely in what the government is not saying: why exactly they chose to end the relationship. If more businesses decide to follow suit, does this open the door for open source, Microsoft, and Google?

Andrea Hayden, April 30, 2012

Sponsored by Ikanow

ZyLAB’s Press Room informs us, “’EU Reform of Data Protection Rules Complicate Cross Border Litigation’, Warns ZyLAB.” We wonder: how may EU entities are attentive to warnings? Maybe the financial crisis in Spain, oil, and unemployment are on the radar too? Anything’s possible.

At issue here are existing or proposed rules that ZyLAB warns will affect any company with US business connections, such as the proposed reform of data protection rules by the European Commission last January and the new Sedona Conference International Principles on Discovery, Disclosure & Data Protection published last December. The write up asserts:

“In an international business environment organizations can become involved in complex, high-stake regulatory investigations that cross international boundaries. When that happens, it is not easy to grasp the full spectrum of international litigation issues to resolve cross-border disputes. ‘Firm control over all of your data and having machine assisted monitoring and audit procedures incorporated in your compliance strategy, will be essential in helping an organization to deal with the contradictory requirements of eDiscovery versus privacy law and data protection rules,’ says Johannes C. Scholtes, chairman and chief strategy officer of ZyLAB.”

The company offers a series of webinars and roundtables that address these issues, the first of which is titled, “Cross-Border Litigation: Preparing for the Unknown.” See the write up for more details.

EU, listen up!

Cynthia Murrell, April 10, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

Baidu is the Chinese search engine that has challenged Google’s market share in that country. Largely because it was willing to cooperate with government censors where Google was not, Baidu has taken the lead there. The write up describes the Chinese engine:

“The engine Baidu was founded in 2000. A simple search engine, it has become a multi-faceted site offering a range of services (a community of Questions / Answers, a ‘Wikipedia’, an instant messaging …). Baidu is to launch just such a new version of its browser.”

Here are the stats behind the battle: Baidu receives over 80% of Chinese queries, as opposed to Google’s 11%. Baidu’s net income last year was up by 88% over the previous year. 88%! Finally, even Google’s measly 2% stake in its rival is gone, jettisoned during the company’s censorship conflict with the Chinese government.

Even though it cost the Goog, we still say it made the right choice in refusing to cave to China’s demands. Sometimes doing the right thing requires some sacrifice.

Stephen E. Arnold, March 26, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

I learned quite a bit in my close encounters with the Fast ESP technology. No, ESP does not mean extra sensory perception. ESP allegedly meant the enterprise search platform. Fast Search, before its purchase by Microsoft, was a platform, not a search engine. The idea was that the collection of components would be used to build applications in which search was an enabler. The idea was a good one, but search based applications required more than a PowerPoint to become a reality. The 64 bit Exalead system, developed long before Dassault acquired Exalead, was one of the first next generation, post Google systems to have a shot at delivering a viable search based application. (The race for SBAs, in my opinion, is not yet over, and there are some search vendors like PolySpot which are pushing in interesting new directions.) Fast Search was using marketing to pump up license deals. In fact, the marketing arm was more athletic than the firm’s engineering units. That, in my view, was the “issue” with Fast Search. Talk and demos were good. Implementation was a different platter of herring five ways.

Fast Search block diagram circa 2005. The system shows semantic and ontological components, asserts information on demand, and content publishing functions—all in addition to search and retrieval. Similar systems are marketed today, but hybrid content manipulation systems are often a work in progress in 2012. © Fast Search & Transfer

I once ended up with an interesting challenge resulting from a relatively large-scale, high-profile search implementation. Now you may have larger jobs than I typically get, but I was struggling with the shift from Inktomi to the AT&T Fast search system in order to index the public facing content of the US federal government.

Inktomi worked reasonably well, but the US government decided in its infinite wisdom to run a “free and open competition.” The usual suspects responded to the request for proposal and statement of work. I recall that “smarter than everyone else” Google ignored the US government’s requirements.

This image is from a presentation by Dr. Lervik about Digital Libraries, no date. The slide highlights the six key functions of the Fast Search search engine. These are extremely sophisticated functions. In 2012, only a few vendors can implement a single system with these operations running in the core platform. In fact, the wording could be used by search vendor marketers today. Fast Search knew where search was heading, but the future still has not arrived because writing about a function is different from delivering that function in a time and resource window which licensees can accommodate. © Fast Search & Transfer

Fast Search, with the guidance of savvy AT&T capture professionals, snagged the contract. That was a fateful procurement. Fast Search yielded to a team from Vivisimo and Microsoft. Then Microsoft bought Fast Search, and the US government began its shift to open source search. Another consequence is that Google, as you may know, never caught on in the US Federal government in the manner that I and others assumed the company would. I often wonder what would have happened if Google’s capture team had responded to the statement of work instead of pointing out that the requirements were not interesting.

Nevertheless, the Fast Search implementation was darned exciting, and I gathered some fascinating, first-hand information about index times, system performance, tuning, and customization. Ah, valuable lessons which are ignored by many 30 somethings today.

In the salad days of Fast Search, the Norwegian company abandoned Web search to Google and decided to focus on enterprise search. At that time, 2002 and 2003, Fast Search had the cash from its sale of its Web search technology to Overture, later Yahoo. The idea was that Fast Search was better, faster, cheaper, and in every possible way, a more appropriate system for the enterprise than Autonomy, Convera, Endeca, Oracle, and Verity. What interested me was that Fast Search had a variable alternative to Google and even possessed some advertising capability. A fateful decision it was to abandon Web search and advertising based revenue for the enterprise market.

Google figured out that running Web search and ads was like a SpanDex outfit—one size would fit everyone. The enterprise market was nothing more than unique search installations. The financial challenge of tailoring a solution to many different customer use cases remains the single biggest problem for enterprise search vendors. Even the verticalization in customer support or business intelligence requires expensive, time consuming tailoring. Fast Search ignored the marketing and engineering cost implications of selling one offs. Licensees then and now don’t know much about search costs. Fast Search reported quarter on quarter growth that struck me as surprisingly robust. Even AT&T believed the Fast Search marketing pitch. One AT&T project manager told me, “The Fast Search CTO is so wonderfully pleasant.” Yep, pleasant.

There I was in a post 9/11 project which was under scrutiny from the White House, various Government Accountability observers, and the General Services Administration. I ended up involved in both the procurement process which would morph into implementation and then after a few years and IV&V job on this project due to some interesting accounting maneuvers. (IV&V is government speak for investigations related to technology implementations. The acronym stands for Independent Verification and Validation. That work is not public even today.)

This is a diagram used by Dr. Lervik to show how Fast Search could parse a document and extract key elements of that document. The idea was that such parsing would permit text mining. Google’s Alon Halevy was working independently on a somewhat similar system. Dr. Halevy’s work has not yet become a user facing service. Google continues to invest in sophisticated content processing. Once again, Fast Search had a good idea, but the costs and complexity associated with certain ideas can stretch a vendor’s financial resources. The appetite for money in the search and retrieval business is significant. © Fast Search & Transfer

When the news of Microsoft’s purchase of Fast Search for an astounding at the time $1.2 billion, I asked myself, “Who in the heck at Microsoft did the due diligence on this deal.” I had picked up rumblings of dissatisfaction among Fast Search licensees after my brush with the system in the 2002 to 2004 period. As I recall, I heard about some technical issues on a job for a newspaper in London. Next, I provided input to a problem at a German publishing company. In short, I was asked to write about Fast.

I was giving a talk in London in October 2008 when I learned that the Norwegian authorities had visited the Fast Search offices in Oslo. The purpose of the authorities’ visit was to gather information about the company’s finances. At the time of the 2008 visit, Microsoft was in the driver’s seat and seemed happy to act as if there were zero problems with the company, its technology, or Fast Search license deals. Microsoft, in my opinion, has just moved on, marketing the heck out of the Fast Search technology.

Imagine my surprise when I learned from my contacts in Norway that the Web site DN.no (Business Day) ran this story: “Fast-topper tiltalt for regnskapsbrudd og markedsmanipulasjon.” You can read it in Norwegian, have a friendly Norwegian librarian translate it, or use the good-enough Google system. Here’s the key passage:

Norwegian authorities have accused former CEO John Markus Lervik and former sales director Torbjorn Kanestrøm company FAST Search & Transfer ASA (Fast) for violations of the Accounting and market manipulation.

The article digs into the allegations and includes some interesting historical references. The accused search wizard, John Lervik allegedly said:

I had nothing to gain by manipulating accounts. I had no stake in the company. I wanted a stake, and stopped because I did not. To find out what the problem with the accounts, you must look at who benefited from it. And it was not me, he told Business Today that time.

I don’t have any fungible information on this most recent matter.

My view remains:

• Fast Search was reporting robust revenues up to the time of the sale to Microsoft, then revenues were questioned and, as I recall, restated at a lower figure
• Customers were grousing that the 64 bit version of Fast Search was delayed
• The use of proprietary, open source, and partners’ code was adding to the time and cost of deployments
• Engineering resources were not sufficiently deep to respond to some licensees’ requests for prompt service.

This is a Dr. Lervik diagram summarizing how Fast Search in the period before the Microsoft acquisition could perform linguistic query analysis. Since the acquisition, the technology continues to require third party add ins and engineering services to deliver the Fast “vision.” © Fast Search & Transfer

The legacy of Fast, like the legacy of Google, is quite different from the information now circulating about the system. As I write this, Microsoft’s integrators are finding that consulting and engineering services, components to make SharePoint search hum, and off-the-shelf snap ins are a large, booming business. Microsoft has, I have heard, more than 100 million SharePoint licensees. Each of these is a gold mine for those who can make SharePoint search work like Autonomy or any other established search system.

I may write about the legacy of Fast Search, but for now, recalling the rise, sale, and possible legal hassle about Fast Search is a reminder to those who think search is simple. Search is tough. Generating revenue in the enterprise market is tougher. As enterprise search is commoditized, one must be aware of what costs accompany any search and retrieval implementation. Some costs are technical. Some are informational. Others are personal. Search can bite and bite hard.

Stephen E Arnold, March 8, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

The space agency reported to Congress this week that it had been hacked a total of 13 times last year, including one China-based attack that gained complete access and control of mission critical systems as well as employee accounts.

If you want to go into space, NASA is out of the game. Probably a good idea. If I want to search for NASA data, should I use Jike.com?

Stephen E Arnold, March 6, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

WAND believes that being a major military power and protecting other nations is of little importance if we cannot handle our own problems at home. This is a somewhat unusual yet interesting view of the military and politics and the battle lines that some groups have drawn. It seems that some believe even the US Military needs an allowance.

Interesting approach to marketing taxonomies.

April Holmes,March 2, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

NASA is accelerating into the ether and it seems to us that the agency plagued with exogenous complexity is retrenching. Government Computer News reveal, “NASA Wants to Put Web Services in Agile-Like Cloud.” The agency wishes to unite content management for its disparate facilities under nasa.gov. Writer Rutrell Yasin relates:

The target environment for Web services is an ‘agile, cloud-based enterprise infrastructure’ that provides the three cloud delivery models — infrastructure as a service, software as a service and platform as a service — according to a draft statement of work NASA issued Feb. 6. The Web infrastructure will service internal and public-facing applications and sites, using an interoperable, standards-based and secure environment, the document states.

Collaboration tools are also on the wish-list, and NASA’s Office of the CIO will make sure the changes adhere to the Representational State Transfer architecture model and other best practices. (Well, that’s good.)

The agency will primarily turn to open-source solutions; we welcome that direction but must ask: is cost control now the order of the day? The answer is, “No matter what buzzwords or woolen cloth is draped over the explanation, the budget crunch is forcing changes which will embrace lower-cost options and headcount reductions. Grants in a girdle are next are in development.

Cynthia Murrell, February 25, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

The write up reports:

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency told software vendors on Tuesday that it plans to revolutionize the way it does business with them as part of a race to keep up with the blazing pace of technology advances.

So this is a contracting shift, not a fundamental adjustment of the outfit which purchases systems which all to often may not play well with others. Some folks call this characteristic of government information technology “silos” or “chimneys.” The idea, which may not apply to the folks looking to shift procurement focus, is that systems and content are “walled” off or “sealed” off from other systems which want to tap into data or information. The result is the mad scramble for information, which often involves late nights, pizza, and manual work.

According to Reuters:

Rather than stick with traditional all-you-can-eat deals known as “enterprise licensing agreements,” the CIA wants to buy software services on a “metered,” pay-as-you-go basis, Ira “Gus” Hunt, the agency’s top technology officer, told an industry conference.

The article included a quote to note:

“The big data problem is the analysis of it,” he [a government official] said. Existing tools “do not aid users … in the mission timelines.”

The headline suggested to me that the technology would shift. Nope, the story makes clear that the CIA will buy stuff on the taxi meter model. Wow. That’s a lot of vendors.

Several observations:

• Taxi meter pricing induces anxiety in budget officers. The reason is that sometimes the driver gets lost and runs up the tab floundering around. Instead of capping costs, taxi meters open the door to pricing surprises.
• Shifts in the government, not just the intelligence community, take time. When I worked in Washington for Halliburton NUS, one elected official to whom I was detailed for a year, told me, “A new president arrives and issues an order. By the time the order makes it way from the top of an agency to the bottom and back up, the president is running for another term.” Speed is not part of the bureaucratic process no matter what some assert.
• A number of agencies, maybe not the CIA, have long term relationships in place. Think in terms of a five year contract. How does one shift an existing agreement with contractual terms regarding payments to the taxi meter model. In my experience, carefully.

Worth watching this development and the Reuters’ headlines for that matter.

Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

The GSA also plans to allow federal purchases of Android devices, although the enterprise in general has avoided enthusiastic adoption of devices running Google’s platform due to a lack of robust support for a variety of features that are important to corporate users, including IPSec VPNs, Microsoft’s Exchange Server and device administration tools to monitor, manage and police the enforcement of desired policies.

Why this paragraph? Easy. Google which has long coveted the US government as a customer now finds that Apple is pushing its cute little nose into the big spending, mostly confused government procurement process. Forget Research in Motion. This news story indicates that Apple can make life tough for Google in more than online music and mobile devices in the consumer market.

How will Google respond? No clue, probably in a Googley way.

Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com