Apple and Google: Too Big to Flail?
November 9, 2011
The game is in its final seconds, a key player gets the ball and flails helplessly as the ball is fumbled. Game over. Football, however, is not life.
That is a plus for both Apple and Google. At lunch today (November 4, 2011),one of the goslings mentioned the appear and and disappearance of the Google Gmail app for the iPhone. I don’t use an iPhone. I don’t use Gmail but I do have an account. I don’t need an app. A phone is for talking. I have another gizmo for email, thank you. With lousy eyes, I can’t see the tiny screens which are made for 12 year olds, not 67 year old geese.
According to CBS News, “Google Flubs Its First iPhone Gmail App.” I suppose when regular TV reports a fumble, I should care. I don’t, but I think there is a lesson in the general release of software with a “bug”. I liked the alleged comment by the pre-eminent Google: “Sorry. We messed up.”
Okay. Flail. Not football.
Then someone mentioned that her nifty iPhone 4S was really annoying. I asked, “Does it make calls?” The answer: “Yes.”
I asked, “What’s wrong with the gizmo?” She said, “The voice recognition thing is not working.”
Okay, fumble. Apparently, the death of Steve Jobs has left Apple in a tough spot. A key feature does not work and there is no one to fire off snappy emails in the pre-dawn hours.
According to the Washington Post’s “Apple’s Siri Shows She’s Only a Beta,”
Owners of the iPhone 4S, some of whom are still dealing with the battery drain issues from iOS 5, were further disappointed Thursday when Siri, the automated personal assistant on the phone, took some unapproved personal leave. Siri seemed to be back in service by late Thursday evening.
Another flail. Not a game. Just customers. Who cares?
A tip of the managerial hat to http://jeffreykrames.com/2009/10/12/a-person-could-be-the-biggest-unforced-error-of-all/
As my wont, I see these two events without the personal annoyance that customers of Google and Apple may experience. I don’t really care about either of the two companies.
A Coming Dust Up between Oracle and MarkLogic?
November 7, 2011
Is XML the solution to enterprise data management woes? Is XML a better silver bullet than taxonomy management? Will Oracle sit on the sidelines or joust with MarkLogic?
Last week, an outfit named AtomicPR sent me a flurry of news releases. I wrote a chipper Atomic person mentioning that I sell coverage and that I thought the three news releases looked a lot like Spam to me. No answer, of course.
A couple of years ago, we did some work for MarkLogic, a company focused on Extensible Markup Language or XML. I suppose that means AtomicPR can nuke me with marketing fluff. At age 67, getting nuked is not my idea of fun via email or just by aches and pains.
Since August 2011, MarkLogic has been “messaging” me. The recent 2011 news releases explained that MarkLogic was hooking XML to the buzz word “big data.” I am not exactly sure what “big data” means, but that is neither here nor there.
In September 2011, I learned that MarkLogic had morphed into a search vendor. I was surprised. Maybe, amazed is a more appropriate word. See Information Today’s interview with Ken Bado, formerly an Autodesk employee. (Autodesk makes “proven 3D software that accelerates better design.” Autodesk was the former employer of Carol Bartz when Autodesk was an engineering and architectural design software company. I have a difficult time keeping up with information management firms’ positioning statements. I refer to this as “fancy dancing” or “floundering” even though an azure chip consultant insists I really should use the word “foundering”. I love it when azure chip consultants and self appointed experts input advice to my free blog.)
In a joust between Oracle and MarkLogic, which combatant will be on the wrong end of the pointy stick thing? When marketing goes off the rails, the horse could be killed. Is that one reason senior executives exit the field of battle? Is that one reason veterinarians haunt medieval re-enactments?
Trade Magazine Explains the New MarkLogic
I thought about MarkLogic when I read “MarkLogic Ties Its Database to Hadoop for Big Data Support.” The PCWorld story stated:
MarkLogic 5, which became generally available on Tuesday, includes a Hadoop connector that will allow customers to “aggregate data inside MarkLogic for richer analytics, while maintaining the advantages of MarkLogic indexes for performance and accuracy,” the company said.
A connector is a software widget that allows one system to access the information in another system. I know this is a vastly simplified explanation. Earlier this year, Palantir and i2 Group (now part of IBM) got into an interesting legal squabble over connectors. I believe I made the point in a private briefing that “connectors are a new battleground.” the MarkLogic story in PCWorld indicated that MarkLogic is chummy with Hadoop via connectors. I don’t think MarkLogic codes its own connectors. My recollection is that ISYS Search Software licenses some connectors to MarkLogic, but that deal may have gone south by now. And, MarkLogic is a privately held company funded, I believe, by Lehman Brothers, Sequoia Capital, and Tenaya Capital. I am not sure “open source” and these financial wizards are truly harmonized, but again I could be wrong, living in rural Kentucky and wasting my time in retirement writing blog posts.
Is Google Making Customer Support Progress?
November 5, 2011
Looks like more customer support issues for Google, this time revolving around App Engine services. Yikes.
Google has had previous customer support issues surrounding the Nexus One Android smart phone with no support provisions. App Engine customers are now asked to pay $500 a month for Premier services, but support stops at 6 p.m. and is closed on holidays. The service reopens at midnight, still leaving a six-hour gap.
The App Engine support is compared to Amazon Web Services, where customers only pay $400 a month and get support around the clock.
In the article “Google to App Engine Customers: Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You” on InfoWorld, Bill Snyder shares more information:
According to Google’s guidelines, customers must try to fix problems themselves before contacting support, then submit a written request for help. If the issue is considered a priority, meaning a problem that affects customer operations, Google says it will respond within four hours. That doesn’t sound very good to me. After all, four hours is a big chunk of a business day. I’m not sure how many companies use App Engine for operational functions, as opposed to developmental ones, but those that do can’t be very happy about losing that much business time.
Google is quoted in the same article as looking forward to “expanding coverage in the future” and premier support is offered during business hours. Bottom line? Google sucks at customer service. The company should at least give customers good value for the money they are paying the multi-billion dollar company.
Is Google making customer support progress? Use the comments to let us know your Google experience. Maybe Oracle will pitch an InQuira or RightNow solution next time the two companies are meeting face to face.
Andrea Hayden,November 5, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint and Its Sometimes Interesting Costs
November 3, 2011
SharePoint is touted as the ultimate solution to content management and collaboration for enterprises. Microsoft, however, never discusses the costs associated with their software, except for how it’s cost effective and overtime will save your business money. But is that true? Redmondmag.com posted an enlightening article about the hidden costs involved in a SharePoint project, “Study: SharePoint Costs High Due to Inadequate Skills.”
A study conducted by the Azaleos Corp. discovered that the average cost to run SharePoint per user is $46/month. Using Microsoft Exchange proved to be cheaper at $15-15/month per user. SharePoint users also cited downtime as the most common problem.
“The downtime mostly stemmed from hardware errors or mistakes made by IT team members. Those problems caused average monthly management costs for SharePoint to double to around $90 per user per month. Almost half (43 percent) of study respondents pointed to “a lack of administrator skills, training, and knowledge as an inhibitor to efficiently leveraging SharePoint.”
SharePoint is still a young piece of software with a manifest destiny for its future. Its problems are many, but there are a lot of third party solutions to resolve them. At the end of the article, Azaleos Corp. advertises it’s AzaleosX app to help increase uptime.
We believe that you may want to take a close look at the cost effective search and content processing solution from SurfRay. Contain costs and improve user satisfaction with one snap in for SharePoint.
Whitney Grace, November 3, 2011
SurfRay
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October 28, 2011
Records Management and Humor: An Odd Couple
October 27, 2011
Records management is a dry topic, not exactly humorless but close. We must admit that one of the goslings chuckles when he hears the phrase “destroy by date.” I just go up in ARMA.
We learned that there was some levity with regard to records management at the recent Legal Information Technology Conference, part of the wider ARMA conference in D.C., it was suddenly newsworthy comedy.
Law Technology News’ article, “Records Management as Stand-Up Comedy” shares a few quips from the conference:
Bryn Bowen, director of records information management at Greenberg Traurig, on establishing information governance in large firms: ‘We are sort of changing the tires while moving the truck.
Stacie Capshaw, associate director of records management at Kirkland & Ellis, said she was able to accomplish records management because her firm is ‘a loose federation of entrepreneurs.’
Rudy Moliere, director of information governance and records management at White & Case, observed that records management is ‘not at all like herding cats — you can see cats.’”
Kudos to those in records management for attempting a form of humor—those legal record managers can be a tough crowd. Did you hear the one about leaving lunch in a banker’s box three years ago?
Andrea Hayden, October 27, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Enterprise Search: The Floundering Fish!
October 27, 2011
I am thinking about another monograph on the topic of “enterprise search.” The subject seems to be a bit like the motion picture protagonist Jason. Every film ends with Jason apparently out of action. Then, six or nine months later, he’s back. Knives, chains, you name it.
The Landscape
The landscape of enterprise search is pretty much unchanged. I know that the folks who pulled off the billion dollar deals are different. These guys and gals have new Bimmers and maybe a private island or some other sign of wealth. But the technology of yesterday’s giants of enterprise search is pretty much unchanged. Whenever I say this, I get email from the chief technology officers at various “big name” vendors who tell me, “Our technology is constantly enhanced, refreshed, updated, revolutionized, reinvented, whatever.”
Source: http://www.goneclear.com/photos_2003.htm
The reality is that the original Big Five had and still have technology rooted in the mid to late 1990s. I provide some details in my various writings about enterprise search in the Enterprise Search Report, Beyond Search for the “old” Gilbane, Successful Enterprise Search Management, and my June 2011 The New Landscape of Search.
Former Stand Alone Champions of Search
For those of you who have forgotten, here’s a précis:
- Autonomy IDOL, Bayesian, mid 1990s via the 18th century
- Convera, shotgun marriage of “old” Excalibur and “less old” Conquest (which was a product of a former colleague of mine at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, back when it was a top tier consulting firm
- Endeca, hybrid of Yahoo directory and Inktomi with some jazzy marketing, late 1990
- Exalead. Early 2000 technology and arguably the best of this elite group of information retrieval technology firms. Exalead is now part of Dassault, the French engineering wizardry firm.
- Fast Search & Transfer, Norwegian university, late 1990s. Now part of Microsoft Corp.
- Fulcrum, now part of OpenText. Dates from the early 1990s and maybe retired. I have lost track.
- Google Search Appliance. Late 1990s technology in an appliance form. The product looks a bit like an orphan to me as Google chases the enterprise cloud. GSA was reworked because “voting” doesn’t help a person in a company find a document, but it seems to be a dead end of sorts.
- IBM Stairs III, recoded in Germany and then kept alive via the Search Manager product and the third-party BRS system, which is now part of the OpenText stable of search solutions. Dates from the mid 1970s. IBM now “loves” open source Lucene. Sort of.
- Oracle Text. Late 1980s via acquisition of Artificial Linguistics.
There are some other interesting and important systems, but these are of interest to dinosaurs like me, not the Gen X and Gen Y azure chip crowd or the “we don’t have any time” procurement teams. These systems are Inquire (supported forward and rearward truncation), Island Search (a useful on-the-fly summarizer from decades ago), and the much loved RECON and SDC Orbit engines. Ah, memories.
What’s important is that the big deals in the last couple of months have been for customers and opportunities to sell consulting and engineering services. The deals are not about search, information retrieval, findability, or information access. The purchasers will talk about the importance of these buzzwords, but in my opinion, the focus is on getting customers and selling them stuff.
Three points:
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October 25, 2011
Autonomy blew past Endeca with its acquisition strategy, revenue growth, and take no prisoners sales tactics. Now Oracle is compressing 10 to 12 years of Autonomy craftsmanship into a week or two of Internet time. The most recent acquisition by the database vendor is RightNow, a now cloud loving customer support vendor. Instead of the on premises craziness, a company wanting to chop customer support costs and reduce customer churn can license RightNow. Oracle is going to be the proud owner of RightNow.
You can read some of the details in “Oracle Buys Cloud-based Customer Service Company RightNow For $1.5 Billion”. RightNow, like Endeca, dates from the late 1990s. My hunch is that there will not be massive investment in RightNow’s technology. The customer list is the big asset.
Step back.
Oracle Text has roots in Artificial Linguistic’s technology from the late 1980a. (I bet the real search experts and the azure chip crowd in New York know all about this system. Hey, that’s why azure chip consultants are so darned successful. Legends in their own minds.) Oracle owns TripleHop, InQuira, and Endeca. Toss in the customer relationship management systems and those systems authorized vendors of search, and you have a collection of finding and tagging technology that makes OpenText search profligacy look downright abstemious.
My take away is that Oracle’s senior management took another look at Autonomy, considering the $10 or $12 billion price tag. Instead of making fun of Hewlett Packard, Oracle seems to have concluded that it needed to follow a similar strategy. Just on an accelerated schedule.
Can Oracle match Autonomy’s financial performance? Does Oracle have Autonomy’s management skill?
Quite a battle will be waged by two giants who care little about search and everything about taking business from the other. That’s the sprit of financial crisis capitalism.
Stephen E Arnold, October 25, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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