Microsoft IBM: Claim and Counter Claim
August 3, 2008
I get a kick out of companies dressed in inflatable sumo suits whacking each other. I chuckle when both combatants swing and end up sitting on the ground looking at one another. That’s what Microsoft and IBM seem to be doing in the group ware and collaboration market. John Fontana does a good job of explaining this inflatable sumo face off in his essay “IBM Counters Microsoft’s Seat Stealing Boast”. You can read the full text of the Network World story here.
The dust up concerns a Microsoft assertion to the effect that Redmond’s SharePoint would capture five million Lotus Notes’ seats, a euphemism for users. IBM asserts this will not happen. IBM just closed a 300,000 seat deal in Asia as evidence to support Lotus Notes’ hegemony.
What must irritate IBM is that Microsoft’s SharePoint is getting quite a bit of public relations traction. To make the SharePoint product more annoying, Ray Ozzie–the inventor of the software category–works for Microsoft.
More on this struggle of the titans in inflatable sumo suits to come. Film at 11.
Stephen Arnold, August 3, 2008
IBM: Mammatus Clouds Are Us
August 2, 2008
G.K. Chesterson’s statement “There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds” came to mind when I read Richard Martin’s article “IBM Brings Cloud Computing To Earth With Massive New Data Centers.” The write up is full of interesting information, and you will want to read it here.
Two points leapt from my flat panel display to my addled goose mind; to wit:
- IBM’s data centers cost about $400 million each. That’s a bargain compared to Microsoft’s San Antonio data center which cost about $650 million.
- IBM has opened centers in Dublin, Ireland; Beijing and Wuxi, China; and Johannesburg, South Africa. Mr. Martin does not tell us how many data centers IBM has.
For a company with $100 billion in revenue, IBM can build lots of data centers.
Mr. Martin reveals this juicy factoid:
IBM first opened a high-performance on-demand computing facility in New York in 2005. One advantage it enjoys over other cloud rivals like Google and Amazon, which essentially offer a do-it-yourself approach, is its army of system engineers and consultants who can assist companies in harnessing and deploying resources in the cloud.
I think of these as computing cloud type mammatus; that is, ominous looking but harmless. You can read more about mammatus clouds here. Better yet, take a gander at a mammatus and remember these clouds are toothless:
My recollection is that IBM has dipped in and out of the mammatus business a number of times. In 1996, IBM had a cloud-based Internet business. IBM sold this business to AT&T. IBM retooled and built a “grid” with a node in West Virginia. I don’t recall the details because the “grid” push drifted to the background at IBM. Now, like Hewlett Packard, IBM’s in the mammatus business–Big Blue mammatuses.
Telco Think: Nah, Google Does Not Matter
August 2, 2008
Telephony Online ran an interesting article by Alex Liu “Does Google Matter?” You can read Mr. Liu’s analysis here. The point of the article is a variant of Microsoft’s “one-trick pony” description of Google. Google sells ads. Its other initiatives have gone nowhere. Therefore, Google does not matter. The statement in Mr. Liu’s analysis that I found most interesting was:
Basically, Google has a materiality problem. Consider this: if the global advertising market is $600B, the online piece of that is $60B and the mobile portion of that is expected to be $6B (tops), that’s a lot of industry crowding out that Google has to win, even assuming differential segment growth—much less venturing into wireless communications services, another inevitable march. This journey into wireless will surely unfold, but it will take longer than most expect.
The author–a partner at prestigious A.T. Kearney and Alexander to the army in Kearney’s Communications, Media and High Technology practice in North America–has lost me. I don’t have a clue what “materiality” means. I’m not sure what “industry crowding out” means. I think I agree with the point that Google’s “journey into wireless” will take some time.
Stepping back from the glittering brilliance of this article, my view of Google and telecommunications is that it is one of five or six sectors that Google is probing. Unlike a telco, Google is not a one-trick pony when it comes to technology. Google has a business model that works just as well as Ma Bell’s coin operated telephones did for decades. I recall sitting in a meeting before the break up listening to chuckles about the shortage of rail cars in upstate New York to move nickels, dimes, and quarters to Manhattan. Google’s business model is not much more sophisticated than Ma Bell’s monopoly over pay phones. In fact, today’s telcos face a digital monopoly that shares some DNA with the old, beloved Ma Bell.
Will Google succeed in the telco sector? What about banking, back office services, entertainment, publishing, or enterprise software? Google’s “goal” of becoming a $100 billion company does not require success in its various initiatives. Google only has to make a reasonable showing in a couple of these sectors and work to keep its business model working.
My research suggests that Google could walk away from telco entirely and experience no material change in its financial performance. Telco, like Google’s financial services or publishing probes, are nothing more than applications running on Google’s infrastructure. I wish to remind Mr. Liu that Google has an infrastructure in place, working, and purpose built for massively parallel applications. Telcos don’t. Furthermore, telcos lack the vision, the money, and the time to duplicate the Google “as is” infrastructure.
Google enjoys more degrees of freedom than telcos. Google is largely unregulated. Telcos are regulated. Google is applications centric. Telcos are earnings centric. Google is experiencing a nice lift across its operations. Telcos are struggling to keep the blimps airborne. Google has nothing to lose probing telco land. Telcos have a great deal to lose whether the companies ignore Google or challenge Google. Google is a master of what I call Goo-jitsu; that is, minimum effort and cost yields maximum reaction and cost for its opponents.
I am delighted that I am no longer in the consulting game. My blood pressure is rising just thinking about the argument Mr. Liu has advanced. I think its lacks “materiality”, but that’s just an addled goose’s opinion.
Stephen Arnold, August 2, 2008
SearchCloud: Term Weighting Arrives
August 1, 2008
Yahoo’s BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) has caught the attention of a number of companies in the information retrieval sector. A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to SearchCloud.net, a BOSS user.
SearchCloud.net, according to KillerStartUps, allows the user to weight certain terms:
The hook used by SearchCloud is providing users with the ability to weight the importance of keywords by changing the size of the fonts. Theoretically, this should allow for more accurate search results and the ability to search within given Web sites by simply placing the site name in a big font and the topic in a smaller one. While it is a great idea with a lot of potential, testing of the engine brought back very mixed results and the interface is not very well-designed. Searching for “Killerstartups” in a large font and “Cuil” in a smaller one did bring back a number of Killerstartups related pages but none with “Cuil” referenced.
You can read the KillerStartUps review here. In talking with the developers of SearchCloud.net, the SearchCloud.net team pointed out that KillerStartUps search would have returned better results had KillerStartUps reverse their weightings. The most specific search terms should be weighted higher by using larger letters. Here’s an example:
You can see the weights I assigned to each of my query terms. A larger font means the term has more weight in the query.
You can see that the terms that I wanted to emphasize I put in larger letters using the selector button above the cloud. And you may be interested in a contrarian review of SearchCloud.net on TechCrunch review here. I am tipping toward the positive with regard to this new service.
I found SearchCloud.net intuitive, and the system allows me to control the importance of certain terms in my query. For example, let’s take a query I ran this morning for a client about Google’s mobile search results.
I saw a report from South Africa that suggested Google was delivering a “mash up” of results from different Google indexes. I needed to locate information about this alleged Google function. You can read about what I learned here. I found SearchCloud.net–despite some start up rough edges–quite useful.
The tag cloud appears to the left of the results list. I have selected the grid display of results. I can scroll through a large number of relevance ranked hits very quickly. This is a useful interface option.
SearchCloud.net, like Kartoo.com, exploits Adobe technology to good effect.
There are some functions that I would like to see the SearchCloud.net team add; for example, in the results view, I want to be able to fiddle with the term weights and see the results rerank themselves. My hunch is that this function will be implemented, but like most start ups, SearchCloud.net must husband its resources.
When I spoke with the young-at-heart owners of SearchCloud.net, I was impressed with their candor and willingness to listen to my questions and suggestions. Right now, the company is self-funded and based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Ads are one of the revenue sources the team is discussing at this time.
Steven Eisenhauer, president, told me:
We would like to see the major players in the industry realize that the user is smart enough to control the parameters of their searches. It would be nice too see Google or Yahoo integrate our technology as an option for their users.
Milwaukee is known for beer, not investment banks. If you want to own a piece of a search company, maybe you could contact SearchCloud.net at info at searchcloud dot net?
SearchCloud.net shows considerable promise, and I have long been skeptical of Adobe’s Web technology. I may have to soften my stance based on what the SearchCloud.net wizards have been able to accomplish with Flex. I have added this company to my watch list.
Stephen Arnold, August 1, 2008
Google and Privacy: Usage Data Model
July 31, 2008
I’ve been sitting on the sidelines watching the Google privacy articles, posts, and arguments. The Smoking Gun’s essay here hooked my attention. I wanted to flag the comment that caught my attention:
Arguing that technology has ensured that “complete privacy does not exist,” Google contends that a Pennsylvania family has no legal grounds to sue the search giant for publishing photos of their home on its popular “Street View” mapping feature.
WebProNews’s David Utter also has a useful comment about the problem. His July 31, 2008, article “Company Responds to Street View Photo Lawsuit” here picks up the theme that the aggrieved party “as being out of touch with reality.” Mr. Utter reminded me of Scott McNealy’s comment “You already have zero privacy. Get over it.”
If you are interested in privacy, you may want to look up US20060224583, “Systems and Methods for Analyzing a User’s Web History.” I mention this invention in my KMWorld feature “Cloud Computing and the Issue of Privacy”, pp. 14 ff in the July/August issue.
Here’s the abstract for this invention by Andrew Fikes, Jeff Korn, Oren Zamir and Christine Irani:
A user’s prior searching and browsing activities are recorded for subsequent use. A user may examine the user’s prior searching and browsing activities in a number of different ways, including indications of the user’s prior activities related to advertisements. A set of search results may be modified in accordance with the user’s historical activities. The user’s activities may be examined to identify a set of preferred locations. The user’s set of activities may be shared with one or more other users. The set of preferred locations presented to the user may be enhanced to include the preferred locations of one or more other users. A user’s browsing activities may be monitored from one or more different client devices or client application. A user’s browsing volume may be graphically displayed.
If you have not made a connection among the geographical data, the usage data, and the information a user or cluster of users examines, you may want to read this document. Remember, I don’t want to imply that Google is using the technology disclosed in a patent document. I do think these documents provide a glimpse inside the engineering “factory” at Google.
Stephen Arnold, July 31, 2008
Google: Universal Search on Mobile Devices
July 31, 2008
My earlier post here about Google in South Africa contained a reference to universal search on mobile devices. I had two incoming messages asking about this functionality. One person asserted that universal search on a mobile device was not possible and that the South Africa source I cited was out to lunch. To offer some additional information, I would like to direct everyone’s attention to US20080183699, “Blending Mobile Search Results.” This patent document discloses an invention by Ning Hu and Vida U. Ha. You can snag a copy at the wonderful USPTO here. The abstract for this invention is:
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for blending mobile search results. A method includes receiving a search query and multiple search results. The search results each satisfy the search query and have a respective search result quality score. The search results include generic and mobile search results. The generic and mobile search results each identify a generic and mobile resource, respectively. The search result quality scores include mobile and generic search result quality scores for the mobile and generic search results, respectively. The mobile search result quality scores and the generic search result quality scores were generated according to different scoring formulas. Based on one or more terms in the search query, the search query is classified as a mobile query. As a consequence, one or more search result quality scores are modified to improve the sorting of search results that include both mobile and generic search results.
My reading of this patent document suggests that Google indeed has some Universal Search tools on its digital workbench.
Stephen Arnold, July 31, 2008
Google: South Africa Market Share
July 31, 2008
MoneyWeb reported on July 31, 2008 about “Google’s Search Dominance.” You can read Rudolph Muller’s article here. The points about Google that I found interesting were:
- Google’s South African office is headed up by a former Novell wizard, Stafford Masie
- Google traffic dwarfs that of Ananzi and Aardvark. “Ananzi currently attracts 221,436 unique monthly visitors, down from 314,132”, reports Mr. Muller. Aardvark “received 88 774 unique monthly visitors, down from 106 102 during the same period in 2007.”
- “Mobile remains the leading telecommunications medium in the country,” Mr. Muller reports. Google offers universal search for mobile in South Africa.
- YouTube.com is popular in South Africa.
Africa is quickly becoming the next “big thing”. Google appears to be poised for growth.
Stephen Arnold, July 31, 2008
Stanford TAP: Google Cool that Trails Cuil
July 31, 2008
in the period from 2000 to 2002, Dr. Ramanathan Guha with the help of various colleagues and students at Stanford built a demonstration project call TAP. You can download a Power Point presentation here. I verified this link on July 30, 2008. Frankly I was surprised that this useful document was still available.
TAP was a multi-organization research effort. Participants included IBM, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon University.
Why am I writing about information that is at least six years old? The ideas set forth in the Power Point were not feasible when Dr. Guha formulated them. Today, the computational power of multi core processors coupled with attractive price-performance ratios for storage makes the demos from 2002 possible in 2008.
TAP was a project set up to unify islands of XML from disparate Web services. TAP also brushed against automatic augmentation of human-generated Web content.Working with Dr. Guha was Rob McCool, one of the developers of the common gateway interface. Mr. McCool worked at Yahoo, and he may still be at that company. Were he to leave Yahoo, he may want to join some of his former colleagues at Google or a similar company.
Now back to 2002.
One of TAP’s ambitious goals was to “make the Web a giant distributed database.” The reason for this effort was to bring “the Internet to programs”. The Web, however, is messy. One problem is that “different sites have different names for the same thing.” TAP wanted to develop a system and method for descriptions, not editors, to choreograph
the integration.”
The payoff for this effort, according to Dr. Guha and Mr. McCool is that “good infrastructures have waves of applications.” I think this is a very important point for two reasons:
- The infrastructure makes the semantic functions possible and then the infrastructure supports “waves of applications”.
- The outputs of the system described is new combinations of information, different ways to slice data, and new types of queries, particularly those related to time.
Here’s a screen shot of TAP augmenting a query run on Google.
The augmented results appear to the left of the results list. These are sometimes described as “facets” or “assisted navigation hot links”. I find this type of enhance quite useful. I can and do scan result lists. I find overviews of the retrieved information and other information in the system helpful. When well executed, these augmentations are significant time savers.
Keep in mind that when this TAP work up was done, Dr. Guha did not work at Google. Mr. McCool was employed at Stanford. Yet the demo platform was Google. I find this interesting as well that the presentation emphasizes this point: “We need [an] infrastructure layer for semantics.”
Let me conclude with three questions:
- Google was not directly mentioned as participating in this project, yet the augmented results were implemented using Google’s plumbing. Why is this?
- The notion of fueling waves of applications seems somewhat descriptive of Google’s current approach to enhancing its system. Are semantic functions one enabler of Google’s newer applications?
- When will Google implement these enhanced features of its interface? As recently as yesterday, the Cuil.com interface was described as more up to date than Google. Google had functionality in 2002 or shortly thereafter that moves beyond what Cuil.com showed today.
Let me close with a final question. What’s Google waiting for?
Stephen Arnold, July 31, 2008
Cluuz.com: Useful Interface Enhancements
July 31, 2008
Cluuz.com is one of the search companies tapping Yahoo’s search index. The Cluuz.com has introduced some useful interface changes. I will be digging into this system in future write ups, but I want to call your attention to one of the innovations I found useful. (my first Cluuz.com write up is here.)
Navigate to Cluuz.com here. Enter your query. You will see a result screen that looks like my query for “fractal frameworks”.
The three major changes shown in this screenshot are:
- Entities appear in the tinted area above the graphic. My test queries suggested to me that Cluuz.com was identifying the most important entities in the result set.
- A top ranked link with selected images. Each image is a hot link. I could tell quickly that the top ranked document included the type of technical diagram that I typically want to review.
- A selected list of other entities and concepts.
Useful SharePoint Info, Useless Presentation
July 30, 2008
A happy quack to J. Peter Bruzzese for his “Desperately Seeking Enterprise Search” which appeared in the July 30, 2008, InfoWorld Web log. You can read the story here. For me the most useful part of the write up was this passage:
Although the MOSS and Search offerings are still available and current, Microsoft has moved on with offers like Search Server 2008 Express and Search Server 2008. From a feature comparison perspective, MOSS 2007 still wins out despite the lack of streamlined installation; it more than makes up for that with such features as People and Expertise Searching, Business Data Catalog, and SharePoint Productivity Infrastructure.
One useful part of the write up is the inclusion to links about SharePoint in its various incarnations. These comparisons and descriptions can be tough to find on the InfoWorld Web site. I recommend that you snag these links and tuck them away for future reference.
Now, to the presentation. Mr. Bruzzese just writes the articles, some other group sets up the InfoWorld Web log. Here’s what you will encounter if you try to print the page: partial printing and two blank pages. Pretty annoying.
There are some workarounds involve that browser extensions, but here’s a work around that doesn’t require installing any:
- View the source
- Scroll to the beginning text for the story; that is, “There’s a new search player…”
- Copy the text of the story plus any tags to this point in the story: “I’d like to know your opinion.”
- Paste the text into an HTML editor or even a blank Word document
- Save the file.
InfoWorld is so eager to sell that it uses a pop up before you see this story. This is called a “prestitial”, which I dismiss instantly. Then it dumps into the page with the useful information lots and lots of ad baloney, which I also ignore.
You can go back and edit out the embedded calls within Mr. Bruzzese’s quite useful write up. So only Mr. Bruzzese gets the happy quack. The Beyond Search addled goose is winging toward InfoWorld’s Web wizard’s automobile to deposit an avian memento on the vehicle’s waxed fender.
To bad a good story was made hugely annoying to me by a presentation that is more confused than this addled goose.
Stephen Arnold, July 30, 2008
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